"Jan Drew" <jdrew1374@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:pAe8k.2615$LG4.1179@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://theresma.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!80EE15D075B65A13!361.entry
>
> June 20
>
> CDC Admits Thimerosal Safety Study Flawed
> ... so basically, you can't trust anything they've said about how safe
> thimerosal is, or vaccines are. They've been doing the bidding of Big
> Pharma all along, in addition to their own pathological quest to
vaccinate
> everyone against everything as soon after birth as possible (as if there
> is no other way to prevent diseases, and as if vaccines are harmless).
>
> Click through the link to read David Kirby's piece on the Huffington
Post.
>
> Quote
>
>
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/cdc-vaccine-study-design_b_108398.html
>
> CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding has delivered a potentially explosive
> re****t to the powerful House Appropriations Committee, in which she
admits
> to a startling string of errors in the design and methods used in the
> CDC's landmark 2003 study that found no link between mercury in vaccines
> and autism, ADHD, speech delay or tics.
>
> Gerberding was responding to a 2006 re****t from the National Institute
of
> Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), which concluded that the CDC's
> flag****p thimerosal safety study was riddled with "several areas of
> weaknesses" that combined to "reduce the usefulness" of the study.
>
> "CDC concurs," Dr. Gerberding wrote in an undated mea culpa to Congress,
> (provided to me through a Capitol Hill staffer) adding that her agency
> "does not plan to use" the database in question, the Vaccine Safety
> Datalink, (VSD) for any future "ecological studies" of autism.
>
> In fact, Gerberding's re****t said, any continued use of the VSD for
> similar ecological studies of vaccines and autism "would be
uninformative
> and potentially misleading."
>
> Ecological vaccine studies are large, epidemiological analyses of risks
> and trends using computerized data from large populations -- in this
case
> children enrolled at several big HMOs -- without ever examining a single
> patient in person.
>
> CDC officials conducted at least five separate analyses of the data over
a
> four-year period from 1999-2003. The first analysis showed that children
> exposed to the most thimerosal by one month of age had extremely high
> relative risks for a number of outcomes, compared with children who got
> little or no mercury: The relative risk for ADHD was 8.29 times higher,
> for autism, it was 7.62 times higher, ADD, 6.38 times higher, tics, 5.65
> times, and speech and language delays were 2.09 more likely among kids
who
> got the most mercury.
>
> Over time, however, all of these risks declined into statistical
> insignificance, statistical inconsistency or else outright oblivion: The
> relative risk for autism plummeted from 7.62 in the first analysis, to
> 2.48 in the second version, to 1.69 in the third round, to 1.52 in the
> fourth, and down to nothing at all in the fifth, final, and published
> analysis printed in the Journal Pediatrics in November of 2003.
>
> Vaccine officials attributed the steady drop to the elimination of
> "statistical noise" from the data through due diligence and the endeavor
> for excellence in governmental statistical analysis.
>
> Indeed, the VSD study was the main pillar of a hugely influential 2004
> re****t by the Institute of Medicine, which also concluded that there was
> no evidence of link between mercury, vaccines and autism.
>
> To this day, public health officials routinely point to five "large
> epidemiological studies" representing the "highest quality science,"
none
> of which found any link to thimerosal.
>
> In fact, the American VSD study has long been held up as the best and
> brightest of them all (the others were in Sweden, the UK, and two in
> Denmark). And this reputation has stuck in the minds of medicine and the
> media.
>
> Curiously though, even the study's lead author -- Dr. Thomas
Verstraeten,
> an employee of vaccine maker GlaxoSmithKline -- protested that the VSD
> study "found no evidence against an association, as a negative study
> would. In fact, he said that additional study was needed, which "is the
> conclusion to which a neutral study must come."
>
> That's when Congress stepped in.
>
> In 2005, a group of Senators and Representatives headed by Sen. Joe
> Lieberman wrote to the NIEHS (an agency of the National Institutes of
> Health) saying that many parents no longer trusted the CDC to conduct
> independent minded studies of its own vaccine program. Lieberman et al
> asked NIEHS to review the CDC's work on the vaccine database and re****t
> back with critiques and suggestions.
>
> The final NIEHS re****t was a serious and thoughtful critique of where
the
> CDC went wrong in its design, conduct and analysis of the study. The
NIEHS
> panel "identified several serious problems," with the CDC's effort,
> criticism to which the agency had not responded -- until now.
>
> In her letter to the House Appropriations Committee, the CDC Director
> responded directly to many -- though not all -- of the most im****tant
> criticisms and recommendations contained in the NIEHS panel re****t.
>
> For example, the NIEHS had criticized CDC for failing to account for
other
> mercury exposures, including maternal sources from flu shots and immune
> globulin, as well as mercury in food and the environment.
>
> "CDC acknowledges this concern and recognizes this limitation," the
> Gerberding reply says.
>
> The NIEHS also took CDC to task for eliminating 25% of the study
> population for a variety of reasons, even though this represented, "a
> susceptible population whose removal from the analysis might
> unintentionally reduce the ability to detect an effect of thimerosal."
> This strict entry criteria likely led to an "under-ascertainment" of
> autism cases, the NIEHS re****ted.
>
> "CDC concurs," Gerberding wrote, again noting that its study design was
> "not appropriate for studying this vaccine safety topic. The data are
> intended for administrative purposes and may not be predictive of the
> outcomes studied."
>
> Another serious problem was that the HMOs changed the way they tracked
and
> recorded autism diagnoses over time, including during the period when
> vaccine mercury levels were in decline. Such changes could "affect the
> observed rate of autism and could confound or distort trends in autism
> rates," the NIEHS warned.
>
> "CDC concurs," Dr. Gerberding wrote again, "that conducting an ecologic
> analysis using VSD administrative data to address potential associations
> between thimerosal exposure and risk of ASD is not useful."
>
> Read that sentence one more time. The head of the CDC is saying that its
> most powerful and convincing piece of exonerating evidence for
thimerosal
> is, in effect, "useless."
>
> I hope everyone will read it, including the recommendations to make the
> VSD better, and the CDC's agreement with all of the suggestions.
>
> As questionable at the US thimerosal study was, "it was an improvement
on
> other studies, including the two in Denmark, both of which had serious
> weaknesses in their designs," Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, Professor of
> Public Health at UC Davis Medical School and Chair of the NIEHS panel,
> told re****ter Dan Olmsted at UPI.
>
> That leaves very little for the CDC to go on in terms of proving that
> thimerosal and autism are not associated in any way.
>
> Yes, there is always the study of disability services data from
> California -- which seem to be rising among the youngest cohorts of
kids,
> who presumably received little or no mercury because thimerosal was
> largely removed from childhood shots.
>
> But California is an "ecological study" with problems of its own.
>
> "Although (this) information is often used by media and research
entities
> to develop statistics and draw conclusions, some of these findings may
> misrepresent the quarterly figures," cautions the website of the
> California Department of Developmental Services (DDS). "Increases in the
> number of persons re****ted from one quarter to the next do not
necessarily
> represent persons who are new to the DDS system."
>
> Even the CDC admits that "there are several limitations" with linking a
> VSD study design with the California data, Gerberding wrote to Congress,
> because, among other things, California only counts "persons who were
> referred to and/or voluntarily entered" the disability system."
>
> It will be interesting to see how the House Committee -- and the
> mainstream media -- react to this rather breathtaking confession by the
> CDC, which does seem to want to conduct the best vaccine-autism science
> possible (see Gerberding's replies to NIEHS recommendations for
improving
> the VSD: CDC officials are currently conducting in- depth follow up
> studies with VSD patients).
>
> As the waning months of the Bush administration get underway, I can't
help
> but wonder if a little housecleaning might be going on at some of our
top
> health agencies.
>
>
>
>
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