At 8:05 a.m. on Monday, July 16, 2001, a vaccine safety committee of the influential Institute of Medicine convened a public meeting at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Mass.

The purpose: to discuss whether CDC-recommended vaccines might be responsible for a wave of autism and neurological problems in tens of thousands of American children during the 1990s.

The concern: most vaccines contained a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal. Too much mercury has known toxic effects on the brain.

Since the mid 1980s, the number of childhood vaccinations recommended by the CDC had nearly doubled. The agency recommends nearly 40 doses of vaccines for children today. Also since the mid-1980s the autism rate in the United States had soared by 10 times to an astonishing one child in every 300.

Cause and effect or coincidence?

The vaccine manufacturers deny any connection, but the Institute of Medicine -- part of the National Academy of Sciences and a key adviser to the federal government on medical concerns -- wanted to hear from Dr. Thomas Verstraeten, a CDC expert on the issue.

When Verstraeten appeared before the committee, he made a surprise opening statement. "First, I should mention that as of 8 a.m. European time I have been employed by a vaccine manufacturer," Verstraeten told the panel, according to a transcript. "That means since 2 a.m. American time," just hours before he spoke on behalf of the CDC.

Verstraeten had been working at the CDC on a study of 76,659 children to determine if thimerosal might be causing neurological problems like autism.

Signs of autism usually show up around age 2. Sometimes children who had previously appeared to interact normally will suddenly regress, become withdrawn and stop responding to their parents and the outside world. They may perform repetitive motions, like spinning or flapping their arms, have seizures, scream uncontrollably and resist physical touch.

Manufacturers had used thimerosal, which contains ethyl-mercury, as a preservative in multi-dose vials of vaccine. The vials allow needles to be inserted repeatedly and the vaccine drawn out. The vials are cheaper than packaging doses of vaccine separately, without thimerosal.

Depending on what vaccines a child got during that period, a visit to the doctor during the 1990's may have exposed some children to 125 times the limit on mercury set by the Environmental Protection Agency.

A February 2000 draft of Verstraeten's study, obtained by United Press International, appears to show that thimerosal might cause brain problems.

That draft cites "increasing risks of neurological developmental disorders with increasing cumulative exposure to thimerosal."

"We can state that this analysis does not rule out that receipt of thimerosal-containing vaccine in children under 3 months of age may be related to an increased risk of neurologic developmental disorders," the study said.

To discuss the findings in Verstraeten's study, the CDC convened a meeting at the Simpsonwood Retreat Center in Norcross, Ga., on June 7-8, 2000. The agency invited vaccine experts and representatives of four vaccine manufacturers. After discussing that study, Dr. David Johnson, a Michigan state public health officer advising the CDC on vaccines, said that the findings were troubling, according to a transcript."My gut feeling? It worries me enough," said Johnson. "I do not want (my) grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on."Later in the same conversation, CDC officials agreed to keep the study private. "We have been privileged so far that given the sensitivity of information, we have been able to manage to keep it out of, let's say, less responsible hands," said Bob Chen, head of CDC's Vaccine Safety and Development unit. Dr. Roger Bernier, who was then CDC's associate director for science, responded, "I think if we will all just consider this embargoed information, if I can use that term."

The CDC's Walter Orenstein said the agency wanted to look hard at the study before discussing it in public, not cover it up. The CDC never published a study based on the data, but said it would soon. GlaxoSmithKline declined UPI's request to interview Verstraeten from Rixensart, Belgium, but Orenstein said Verstraeten left the CDC to move back to Europe.

For Lara Bono of Durham, N.C., the connection between vaccines with thimerosal and her son's autism is obvious. Bono said her son Jackson began to change drastically within days of receiving a group of thimerosal-containing vaccinations. Bono says that on Aug. 14, 1990, four days after receiving the last of a group of shots, 16-month-old Jackson was becoming withdrawn. Within two weeks he stopped responding or acknowledging his parents. Two weeks after that Jackson no longer would make eye contact. It soon became difficult to get Jackson to eat or sleep. He has had bouts of spinning uncontrollably and seizures.

"Fast forward another couple of months and he was gone. The mercury was in his brain," Bono said.

Years later, Bono discovered that at one point, Jackson's mercury exposure may have been more than 40 times the limit set by the EPA. Nine years later, Bono says, Jackson was diagnosed with mercury poisoning she says came from the vaccines.

Boyd Haley, chairman of the Chemistry Department at the University of Kentucky, has done studies that he says show some children with autism do not excrete harmful mercury from vaccines, but keep it in their bodies. He says the CDC knows the vaccines the agency recommended may have harmed a generation of children. "I know that they know and that is what bothers me more than anything else," Haley said. "You can't do a study showing it (thimerosal) is safe. It is just too damn toxic."

In June of 2000, the agency's Vaccine Advisory Committee signed on to a statement calling for the removal of thimerosal from vaccines "because any potential risk from mercury is of concern."

"However, there remains no convincing evidence of harm caused by low levels of thimerosal in vaccines," the statement said.

In October 2001, the Institute of Medicine panel that heard from Verstraeten found that it is "biologically plausible" that thimerosal causes autism, but that, "current scientific evidence neither proves nor disproves a link."

To avoid any conflict of interest, that panel specifically excludes "anyone who had participated in research on vaccine safety, received funding from vaccine manufacturers or their parent companies, or served on Vaccine Advisory Committees."

An excerpt from UPI, july 20

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