utism, is being charged with professional misconduct by the UK's General Medical Council. The Council's preliminary charges include:

Publishing "inadequately founded" research

Failing to obtain ethical committee approval

Obtaining funding "improperly"

Subjecting children to "unnecessary and invasive investigations"

While small U.S. studies have found a similar link between MMR and autism, major studies have not proven the link. Nonetheless, after Wakefield's paper was published, MMR immunization rates fell (but have since picked up).

The paper was originally published in The Lancet, but was later removed. Wakefield was reportedly being paid to find out whether evidence existed to support potential legal action by parents who claimed their children had been hurt by the MMR vaccine.

BBC News June 12, 2006

The Independent June 12, 2006

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Dr. Mercola's Comment:

Now I completely understand and respect the fact that many of you reading this may strongly disagree with the assertion that vaccines are harmful. That is OK. I know I certainly once did, and I realize that this is the last issue that many physicians hold onto before switching completely to natural medicine.

However, if you carefully examine the evidence the only logical conclusion that you can reach is that most vaccines should not be used. If you haven't yet had time to examine this issue I would strongly encourage you to find the time to do your due diligence on this important topic. It can have a profound influence on the future health of your children.

Getting back to the main story though, I have enormous respect for Dr. Wakefield, as in my opinion he is one of the most well-respected academic researchers on autism in the world. Nearly four years ago he was terminated from his academic position at Royal Free Hospital Medical School, one of the most prestigious medical institutions in England.

What crime did he commit to receive this punishment? He merely reported the truth of his finding on the relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism.

Now he is being charged with serious professional misconduct because he had the courage to stand up for the truth. He defended millions of harmless, innocent children from having their brains potentially injured so that some evil drug companies, like Merck that has already killed tens of thousands with their drug Vioxx, could make even more money.

No, the system in England could not tolerate the dramatic reduction in vaccination rates that occurred when Dr. Wakefield exposed the truth.

Dr. Wakefield now lives in the United States but his experience is a stark reminder of the dangers early pioneers suffer for their courage to enlighten people to the truth.

The situation is not much better in America as even the American Academy of Pediatrics is fighting the removal of mercury from vaccines.

I have had the opportunity to care for literally hundreds of children who have suffered unequivocal brain injury as a result of being exposed to vaccines. If you want to read a compelling story on this topic please review the article I posted last year on Why Amish Children Don't Have Autism.

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Article 2

Why Don't the Amish Have Autistic Children?

From: http://www.mercola.com/2005/may/4/amish_autism.htm

Autism is a difficult disorder to miss, as it is characterized by noticeably abnormal or impaired development in social interaction and communication and a markedly restricted array of activities and interests. And while scientific consensus claims autism has been around for millennia at generally the same prevalence, that prevalence is now considered to be one in every 166 children born in the United States.

Therefore, with this devastating statistic in mind, one reporter set out to analyze the autism rates among Amish communities. Why? Because perhaps searching for autistic Amish children would reveal clues to the cause of autism ... and it did.

The Clues Come Together

Since they have been cut off for hundreds of years from American culture and scientific progress, the Amish may have had less exposure to some new factor triggering autism in the rest of population. The likely culprit: vaccines.

Traveling to the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country in search of autistic Amish children, the reporter, based on national statistics, should have found as many as 200 children with autism in the community -- instead, he found only three, the oldest age 9 or 10:

The first autistic Amish child was a girl who had been brought over from China, adopted by one family only to be given up after becoming overwhelmed by her autism, and then re-adopted by an Amish Mennonite family. (China, India and Indonesia are among countries moving fast to mass-vaccination programs.)

The second autistic Amish child definitely had received a vaccination and developed autism shortly thereafter.

The reporter was unable to determine the vaccination status of the third child.

Dangerous Effects of Thimerosal

In some vaccines, they use a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal that keeps multiple-dose vials from becoming contaminated by repeated needle sticks. After health officials became concerned about the amount of mercury infants and children were receiving through thimerosal-tainted vaccines, the toxin was phased out of U.S. vaccines starting in 1999.

However, due to mislabeling and other problems, its presence is still being felt, and more and more children are suffering because of it.

Washington Times April 18, 2005

Washington Times April 19, 2005

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Dr. Mercola's Comment:

Does anyone out there really need more evidence than this?

Admittedly, this was not a placebo-controlled scientific trial but an evidence-based fact analysis that, in my mind, provides an irrefutable link to a lifestyle and, most likely, mercury-containing vaccine connection to autism.

Folks, you don't have to be a medical doctor, hold advanced epidemiology degrees or teach molecular genetics to figure this one out. You don't even need a degree in rocket science. How much more obvious could it be?

The link between autism and vaccines is certainly not a new idea. In fact, suggestions of this link have been in the national news for at least six years now. Just last year a study, that reviewed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Vaccine Data Link, concluded that children who receive thimerosal-containing vaccinations are 27 times more likely to develop autism than children who do not.

That's a 2,700 percent increase. The numbers just don't lie.

Considering how important this issue is for nearly everyone you know, it might be a good one to forward to your friends and relatives. You can easily do this by using the E-mail to a friend button in the upper right hand section of this page, just under the search box. You can make a larger impact if you write them a personal message in the e-mail as to why they should seriously consider the advice -- and why they may want to subscribe to the newsletter.

This most recent investigation simply provides the proverbial icing on the cake. There aren't too many other places, if any, in America where you can find large groups of children who haven't been vaccinated.

The reporter found three children with autism. One child was adopted and previously vaccinated, another was one of the few Amish children who were vaccinated, and the third had an unclear vaccine history. That leaves, at most, potentially one child out of an expected 200 (from national statistics) with autism. The odds of this being mere coincidence are slim to none.

At Least Change the Rules Concerning the Hepatitis B Vaccine

Because of their religious beliefs, the Amish community chooses not to give their children any vaccines. Understandably, many of you may not choose such a radical approach. However, if you were to focus on just one vaccine, I would encourage you to look at the issues surrounding the hepatitis B vaccine.

The multi-dose version of this vaccine, which is typically administered to newborns before they leave the hospital, still contains thimerosal. This is reprehensible, irresponsible negligence of the highest magnitude. The immature central nervous systems of these helpless newborns are particularly susceptible to toxic insults, and thimerosal, the mercury-containing preservative used in these vaccines, is one of the worst.

It would be much easier to understand if the hepatitis B vaccine had some value, but most natural health experts who study this are convinced that this is nearly always an absolutely unnecessary vaccine.

There are only about 5,000 people a year who develop the most serious consequence of hepatitis B infection, liver cancer. That means we are immunizing tens of millions of infants and causing brain injury that has caused an epidemic of autism to protect liver cancer in 5,000 adults. And, many of these adults have serious social problems like IV drug abuse, alcoholism and poor nutrition that seriously increases their risk for this disease.

If you're a young parent weighing the pros and cons of vaccines, I strongly urge you to learn more about the toxicity of thimerosal, which, again, is still present in multi-dose hepatitis B vaccines, and nearly all the mandated flu vaccine for infants.

Gary Craig's Comment:

For those families dealing with autism, you should know that consistent application of EFT can help with the angers, frustrations and other behavior problems that accompany this affliction. As an example, Linda Johnson writes the following on the EFT web site ...

"With my autistic son, I tapped one night as a surrogate for "focus and attention", "hearing what people are saying", "better social connection" and "neurological symptoms". The next morning, for the first time, he got dressed without prompting at each step while watching the news on television. An absolute first. Doing two things at the same time."

Gary Craig is a pioneering developer of EFT, a profoundly effective emotional/mental healing approach. I learned it from Gary and have taught it to patients in my clinic for years, and they have experienced truly incredible and permanent results with it.

Read more about Gary Craig's EFT Course.

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Article 3:

Leading British Autism Doctor Victimized

From: http://www.mercola.com/2001/dec/22/autism.htm

Dr. Andrew Wakefield was terminated from his position this weekend for no other reason than reporting the truth of his findings critical of the safety of the MMR vaccine. Whenever ignorance, envy, greed and suppression dominate the business of a state (or a profession), there will always be heroes who step forward to challenge the status quo. They are usually individuals who lead ordinary lives until, one day, they are faced with an extraordinary situation and make a conscious decision to do the right thing no matter what price they have to pay.

Andrew Wakefield, a brilliant young British gastroenterologist rising quickly in the ranks of his peers, made a conscious decision in 1997 that he could not turn away from a truth he had discovered during the course of his scientific research, even though he knew it could cost him his career.

When he realized the lives of children depended upon his having the courage to refuse to remain silent about the association he found between MMR vaccine and autism, he chose to do what was right instead of do what was safe.

Now he is paying the price being exacted by a scientific profession and militarized public health infrastructure that cannot tolerate independent thought and scientific investigation for fear it will lead to change.

Like all those involved in perpetuating totalitarian systems that suppress free thought, expression and action, those who have tried to silence and destroy Andrew Wakefield have only succeeded in revealing to the people how afraid they are of what he has to say.

Dr. Wakefield will not only survive what they have done, he will triumph over it. The truth about vaccines and neuroimmune damage, like autism, will shine bright and clear in the end, no matter how many try to hide it because of the courage of individuals like Andrew Wakefield.

When he started work at the Royal Free Hospital Medical School in 1987 Dr. Wakefield was the man everyone wanted to know.

The doctor, who studied at St. Mary's Hospital in west London and trained in bowel transplantation at the University of Toronto, arrived with plans to investigate the cause of two devastating inflammatory bowel diseases: Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.

Throughout the early 1990s his research was supported by grants worth millions from pharmaceutical companies and charities.

These began to fall away when, in 1995, he published a study suggesting that measles vaccination could be a risk factor for the bowel illnesses, the first warning that his research produced unpopular results.

He was unprepared, however, for the opprobrium that ensued when in 1998 he published a medical paper in The Lancet, reporting that he and his colleagues had identified a previously unknown combination of bowel disease and autism in 12 children.

Bowel symptoms are common in autistic children but had until then been regarded as simply a manifestation of their behavioral problems.

The finding that these children had real and severe bowel disease was a groundbreaking discovery. Had the paper stuck to these facts alone Dr. Wakefield might still be in a job.

Against the advice of others in the team, however, he insisted that their joint paper record that eight parents said their previously normal child had fallen ill after receiving the MMR inoculation - a mixture of weakened but live measles, mumps and rubella virus given to a 1.5 million children a year.

The result was uproar and with each piece of research the doctor has announced since - including evidence of measles virus infection in damaged bowel tissue from some of the children - the louder the medical establishment's condemnation of him has grown.

When Dr. Wakefield said in January that he had now seen 170 children with the bowel effects and autism, and that a majority of the parents involved had said their children fell ill after being given the MMR vaccine, the Department of Health's response was to launch a £3 million publicity campaign to reassure parents that it is safe.

The Department of Health said parents often first noticed signs of autism in their children around the time MMR is usually given but that did not mean the two were connected. A spokesman said: "Our view is that the triple vaccine is the safest way to protect children against three potentially serious diseases."

Yesterday Dr. Wakefield said he still did not regret his decision to get involved in the MMR controversy. "Losing a London hospital teaching job doesn't do much for my CV but there are bigger issues at stake," he said.

"What matters now most of all is what happens to these children."

Dawn Richardson, PROVE (Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education)

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Dr. Mercola's Comment:

Dr. Wakefield is one of the most well respected academic researchers in the world in autism. It is sad to see him pulled from this position, but I suspect even better things are in store for him.

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Article 4:

Autism and Mercury

From: http://www.mercola.com/2001/feb/24/autism_mercury.htm

by Tim O'Shea,DC This article is excerpted from Dr. O'Shea's revised edition of The Sanctity of Human Blood.

Inquiry into vaccine safety is exploding like never before, even in the popular press. Research coming from dozens of mainstream medical studies can no longer be easily suppressed, as it has been in the past, especially with the prevalence of online information exchange.

Last September, some 2,000 people, mostly MDs, assembled at the Town and Country resort in San Diego to hear the latest research on autism. Following the April 2000 Congressional hearings on autism and vaccines, this epidemic can no longer be ignored.

The figure of one autistic infant for every 150 is now widely documented.

Dr. Stephanie Cave presented enlightening data on mercury toxicity, drawn largely from the brilliant work of Sallie Bernard. Dr. Cave explained how:

By age two, American children have received 237 micrograms of mercury through vaccines alone, which far exceeds current EPA "safe" levels of .1 mcg/kg. per day. That's one-tenth of a microgram, not one microgram.

Three days in particular may be singled out as spectacularly toxic for infants:

Day of birth: hepatitis B-12 mcg mercury

30 x safe level

At 4 months: DTaP and HiB on same day - 50 mcg mercury

60 x safe level

At 6 months: Hep B, Polio - 62.5 mcg mercury

78 x safe level

At 15 months the child receives another 50 mcg

41 x safe level

These figures are calculated for an infant's average weight in kilograms for each age.

These one-day blasts of mercury are called "bolus doses". Although they far exceed "safe" levels, there has never been any research conducted on the toxicity of such bolus doses of mercury given to infants all these years.

Inconceivable

Historically, the toxicity of mercury has been known for more than a century. The Mad Hatter was more than a fantasy character from Alice in Wonderland. Mad Hatter's disease became well known in England in the mid-1800s, when hat-makers were subject to inhaling the vapors from the mercury-based stiffening compound they used on felt to make top hats.

Sources of Mercury

It is interesting to learn that common household remedies that were used up into the 1960s like mercurochrome and "teething powder" were often the cause of acute mercury poisoning and disease.

In the U.S., EPA mercury toxicity studies have involved contamination from fish, air, and other environmental sources.

Methylmercury has long been associated with serious neurological disorders, demyelinating diseases, gut disease, and visual damage.

The mercury in vaccines, however, is in the form of thimerosal, which is 50 times more toxic than plain old mercury.

Reasons for this include:

Injected mercury is far more toxic than ingested mercury.

There's no blood-brain barrier in infants.

Mercury accumulates in brain cells and nerves.

Infants don't produce bile, which is necessary to excrete mercury.

Thimerosal becomes organic mercury

Once it is in nerve tissue, it is converted irreversibly to its inorganic form. Thimerosal is a much more toxic form of mercury than one would get from eating open-sea fish; it has to do with the difficulty of clearing thimerosal from the blood.

Thimerosal is converted to ethylmercury, an organic form that has a preference for nerve cells.

Without a complete blood-brain barrier, an infant's brain and spinal cord are sitting ducks. Once in the nerve cells, mercury is changed back to the inorganic form and becomes tightly bound. Mercury can then remain for years, like a time-release capsule, causing permanent degeneration and death of brain cells.

Bernard also notes that the body normally clears mercury by fixing it to bile, but before six months of age, infants don't produce bile. Result: mercury can't be excreted.

Four separate government agencies have set safe levels for methylmercury, but no safe levels have ever been set for thimerosal, because thimerosal isn't included in toxicity studies.

Theoretically, that means that the above excesses of safe levels of mercury on the single days listed above are actually 50 times higher.

Does the fact that the mercury is accompanied by a vaccine somehow place it above scrutiny? The Sallie Bernard study of vaccines and mercury toxicity was probably the main reason Congress began to see the obvious correlation.

Mercury And Vaccines

Here's a curious "coincidence." In the late 1930s, Leo Kanner identified autism as a new type of mental disorder. So when was thimerosal introduced into vaccines?

The 1930s

A few years ago, Bernard and her associates began to notice a striking similarity between the symptoms of autism and the symptoms of mercury poisoning. The more research she did, the more it seemed that these two diseases were virtually identical.

Autism and mercury poisoning damage the: brain/nerve cells; eyes; immune system; gastrointestinal system; muscle control; and the speech center.

Although mercury toxicity has been studied for decades, and EPA safety levels have been set, during all that time a child's greatest exposure to mercury - thimerosal in vaccines - was never even included in the toxicity studies!

The talk has always been about methylmercury from seafood and the environment, totally ignoring the two most toxic sources of mercury for children: vaccines and dental amalgams.

The EPA has no jurisdiction over drugs.

That's the FDA's job. This is why vaccines and amalgams don't even figure into the equation when it comes to setting "safe" levels of mercury.

But the FDA does have jurisdiction over drugs and drug companies, right? And over drug company publications, like the Merck Manual, the standard cookbook for drugs and diseases found in every doctor's office in the world.

Surely the FDA, as the government agency charged with safeguarding the nation's health, would want the section on mercury toxicity to warn doctors about the two biggest sources for children: thimerosal and dental amalgams, wouldn't you think?

Yet looking at the Merck Manual (1999), in the section on mercury poisoning (p. 2636), thimerosal and dental amalgams again are not even mentioned!

How can this be, when mercury is widely acknowledged as the third most deadly toxin in the world and thimerosal and amalgams dwarf the trace amounts of mercury from fish and other environmental sources of mercury?

Only one thing can a blackout information over an entire area of study for years at a time in this way - big money.

Such an omission probably wouldn't have anything to do with the revolving door that exists between the FDA; the EPA; the NIH;

"and the sweet positions held by their members before and after those grueling years of public service; or with the 800 waivers of the conflict of interest rule that the FDA has granted in the past two years to "experts," who are paid consultants to the drug companies-consultants who are also members of the FDA advisory committees that make decisions about whether or not to approve vaccines and drugs..." (USA Today, Sept. 25, 2000)

No, of course not.

Soaking up the Mercury

In the San Diego conference on autism, Dr. Amy Holmes gave perhaps the only lucid presentation about treatment. She explained how chelating drugs alone, which go through the blood like Pac Man munching up mercury, don't do much good for autism.

That's because most mercury clears from the blood very soon. Mercury in thimerosal is stored in the gut, liver and brain, and as previously mentioned, becomes very tightly bound to the cells. Once inside those cells, or inside the blood-brain barrier, the mercury is reconverted back to its inorganic form.

Locked into these cells, the mercury can then do either immediate cell damage or become latent and cause the onset of autism, brain disorders, or digestive chaos years later.

Dr. Holmes reported success using alphalipoic acid as an agent to cross the blood-brain barrier to soak up mercury. Once the mercury is brought back into the bloodstream, standard chelators like DMSA can then take it out.

Dr. Holmes has used her protocol on about 300 autistics so far, and shows consistent increases in IQ scores.

FDA: Protector of Whom?

In the face of all this new awareness, it was astounding that in July 2000 the FDA came out with the "parallel-universe" pronouncement that "vaccines have safe levels of mercury."

Especially after their 1998 position:

"... over-the-counter drug products containing thimerosal and other mercury forms are not generally recognized as safe and effective."

As if there were any doubt as to who's really running the show, inconceivable also is the impotence of FDA's request to the vaccine manufacturers to discontinue the use of thimerosal in vaccines (LINK TO ARTICLE ON SITE) The same month that MMWR published this, the CDC made the same milquetoast request.

It's a bit like saying: "Hey guys, since all these kids are turning into vegetables and most of our researchers know it's the mercury, would you mind not putting any more thimerosal in your vaccines, please?

No hurry, though. Whenever you're ready. No need to dump all those batches of vaccine just because people are finding out it's the mercury that's destroying children's brain cells."

The members of the FDA who decide which vaccines get approved make up the advisory board. In his recent House investigation on vaccines, Rep. Dan Burton found out that financial statements of advisory board members are "incomplete."

Noting that this is the only branch of government that allows incomplete financials, in September 2000, Burton called the advisory board's sweetheart arrangements with the vaccine manufacturers a "violation of the public trust."

This includes 70 percent of advisory board members owning stock in vaccines, owning patents on vaccines, and accepting salaries and benefits as employees of the drug companies.

A Matter of Trust

Still think you can trust the government or your physician with your children's blood? Despite the facts and events cited above, consider this joint statement of the U.S. Public Health Services and the American Academy of Pediatrics:

"There is a significant safety margin incorporated into all the acceptable mercury exposure limits. There are no data or evidence of any harm caused by the level of exposure that some children may have encountered in following the existing immunization schedule ... Infants and children who have received thimerosal-containing vaccines do not need to be tested for mercury exposure" (TRY TO REPLACE THIS WITH LINK FROM SITE MMWR, vol. 45, 1999).

These are blatant Orwellian distortions. No harm?

What about the autism epidemic and all the evidence linking it with mercury cited above?

What about the single day doses of mercury cited above that are dozens of times in excess of the EPA's own safety levels?

If everything is so safe, then why did they ask the vaccine pushers to kindly discontinue thimerosal from vaccines as soon as possible at the end of this same statement?

It is beyond the scope of this paper to really go into the politics of mercury. In researching mercury toxicity, a whole area of "dry rot" has been unearthed that deserves its own story. This is the shocking story of how the American Dental Association and the California Dental Association have been systematically hiding the truth about mercury toxicity in fillings for decades.

Silver fillings aren't just silver. They're 50 percent mercury and extremely toxic; every dentist knows it (www.altcorp.com,http://www.amalgam.org/).

In a ludicrous blast of irony, both the ADA and the CDA have inserted into their "code of ethics" strict commandments forbidding dentists from ever revealing to patients the realities of mercury toxicity.

No dentist is allowed to recommend removal of mercury amalgams for health reasons, nor may tell the patient about mercury toxicity even if the patient asks. This gag order has been in place for since the beginning of American dentistry. Exaggeration? Check their websites out:

www.amalgam.org/#anchor69176 www.amalgam.org/#anchor69541

Do you think dentists put mercury into their own families' teeth? Ask them. Anyone who is not a dentist is not constrained by the gag order, imposed on American dentists by the ADA, against telling patients what many perceptive researchers in the field of mercury toxicity already know: that no children should ever get mercury amalgam fillings.

Laughingstock of the West

Researchers across Europe are generally appalled at the massive amounts of vaccines given to American children under two years old. Although Europeans are not as obsessed with vaccines as we are, they do vaccinate.

But most of Europe gives very few vaccinations to children under two years old, primarily because of the unformed gut, immune system, and blood-brain barrier.

This intellectual isolation of ours regarding vaccines is a testimony to the suffocating "brain control" exerted on us by the popular press and all media. Like sheep to the slaughter, we don't know enough to be appalled by our own ignorance.

Autistic Gut

Headlining the September 2000 San Diego Conference was Andrew Wakefield, the British surgeon whose shocking new discoveries show that mercury toxicity alone is not the only factor linking vaccines with the autism epidemic. Dr. Wakefield's research centers around the MMR vaccine - measles/mumps/rubella - which does not contain thimerosal.

Expanding on his presentation at the April 2000 Burton hearings, Dr. Wakefield explained how at least three-quarters of autistics have pathologically blocked bowels, due to the huge swelling of the tissue lining the intestine.

In virtually every autistic patient they examined, this nodular hyperplasia is both an immune response and an autoimmune response that Wakefield and O'Leary have clearly linked to the presence of measles virus from the MMR shot. No other virus was found in those cells.

It is a new bowel pathology.

Wakefield showed graphs of the U.S. and U.K. 10 years apart that were identical in tracing the skyrocketing incidence of autism just after the MMR vaccine was introduced.

He also showed how the incidence of measles had dropped over 85 percent on its own before the MMR was introduced.

One incredible study cited by Wakefield showed how 76 percent of children whose mothers were exposed to atypical measles became autistic after the MMR shot! He called this a "background susceptibility" or predisposition to autism.

Wakefield reminds us that in neither country have there ever been comparative studies on giving multiple vaccines (polyvalent) on the same day.

This custom of ours, with both the DPT and the MMR, is not scientific by any stretch, and is primarily for the convenience of those administering the shots, and those being paid per vaccine. As a result, there is a good chance of geometric ill effects.

Then Wakefield cited the original MMR study (Buynak, Journal of the American Medical Association 1969, vol. 207).

Not only was the safety of multiple vaccines never mentioned, there was no follow-up to the study to see if their conclusions were correct.

In the usual manner of testing vaccines on the live population, MMR was simply tacked onto the mandatory schedule, and we've never looked back.

Despite studies in 1981 on Air Force personnel showing major synergistic adverse effects in the gut from the combination of measles and rubella vaccines, the mandatory schedule went unchanged.

A Glimmer of Hope

Despite these formidable obstacles, doubts are creeping into the overall public "consciousness" about the safety of vaccines. At one in 150, the fact of autism as an epidemic can no longer be covered up.

The work of Wakefield, O'Leary, Megson and Bernard is getting more and more difficult to explain away. Rep. Dan Burton seems relentless in his efforts to acquaint Congress with the meretricious relationship between the FDA Advisory Committee and the vaccine manufacturers.

The massive advertising campaign about the safety of vaccines in the popular media, which is certain to be stepped up in the next few months, is going to look very hollow in the light of clean, unbiased research that is not funded by parties who stand to make billions from certain predetermined results.

And the internet makes this well-referenced, scientific work accessible to the public without the usual monodimensional smokescreen from the popular press.

Ultimately, the value of the San Diego "Conference on Autism" was its signal that autism will not be allowed to slip from the public awareness, like so many other feature stories that come and go. The simple truth has been unveiled, and anyone who looks can see it clearly: our prime question should not be asking how we can cure autism once it occurs. The evidence is now overwhelming that in most cases, this new epidemic that we call autism is a preventable disease.

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Dr. Mercola's Comment:

Congratulations to Dr. O'Shea for an excellent review of this important topic.

Related Articles:

Autism and Mercury Detoxification

Autism: a Novel Form of Mercury Poisoning

Studies on the Effects of Secretin in Children With Autism

Single Injection Of Secretin Does Not Treat Autism

Objections to the Study That Showed Secretin Does Not Work for Autism

Short-Term Benefit In Treating Autism With Antibiotics

The Neurobiology of Lipids In Autistic Spectrum Disorder

Link Between Autism and Vaccination

Autism May Be Caused By an Immune System Response To a Virus

Vaccine - Autism Link Feared

Vaccine Induced Autism

Milk Link To Autism

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References:

Halsey N. Limiting infant exposure to thimerosal in vaccines. JAMA 1999;282:1763.

Cave S. Lecture, DAN 2000 Conference 15 Sept. 2000 San Diego. Shattock P. Lecture DAN 2000 Conference 15 Sept. 2000 San Diego. Crawford. MMR in Air Force personnel. Journal of Infectious Disease 1981;144:403.

Bristol M., et al. State of the science in autism: report to the National Institutes of Health Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 1996;26 (2):121-157.

McGinnis W. Lecture, DAN 2000 Conference, San Diego, 16 Sep 00. AAP/USPHS joint statement about the safety of thimerosal in vaccines Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 1999;48:563.

Bernard S., et al. Autism: a unique type of mercury poisoning - ARC Research, April 3, 2000 (http://www.autism.com/ari/mercurylong.html ).

Pilgrim W., et al. Proceedings of the Conference on Mercury in Eastern Canada and the Northeast States, University of Quebec 1998. (http://www.cciw.ca/eman-temp/reports/publications/98_mercury2/ ).

Dr. Nathan's baby growth chart. (http://www.babyzone.com/drnathan/medref/growthchart.htm ).

Buynak E. Combined live measles, mumps, and rubella virus vaccines JAMA March 1969;207(12):2259.

Cauchon D. FDA advisers tied to industry. USA Today, September 2000, page one.

Spitzer W. Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics , McGill University. c-span.org - Government Reform Committee Hearing on Vaccines and Autism, 6 Apr 2000, Chairman: Representative Dan Burton.

The Merck Manual, 17th edition, Merck Research Labs, 1999.

Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 9 July 1999, April 2000. Howell, Edward. Enzyme Nutrition. 1985 Avery.

Price W. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. 1939 Keats.

Tilden JH. Toxemia Explained. 1926 Kessinger.

Lee R. Conversations in Nutrition Standard Process. 1955.

Wiley H. The Foods and Their Adulterations. 1930.

Tim O'Shea,DC San Jose, California http://www.chiroweb.com/archives/19/05/02.htm

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Article 5

Update on the Autism Epidemic and Vaccines

From: http://www.mercola.com/2002/jul/6/autism.htm

Opening Statement

Chairman Dan Burton

Committee on Government Reform

The Status of Research into Vaccine Safety and Autism 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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

White House June 19, 2002

Submitted By Dawn Richardson

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Dr. Mercola's Comment:

I would encourage you to email this information to as many friends as possible. The only way we are going to win this battle is to educate the public and allow them to review the evidence and make an informed decision.

Folks, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out. Most children in grade school could examine the facts and rapidly reach the conclusion that there is something dangerously wrong with the current vaccine policy.

Thank God for courageous men like Congress Burton who is showing that one man can make a difference in this battle!