|
Lawyers Claim CDC Cooked Books on Mercury: Secret Report
Reveals
October 17, 2001
Press release re internal CDC report on thimerosal and autism
An announcement was made today by the law firm of Waters
& Kraus, the firm that filed the first known lawsuit
alleging that a mercury preservative in children's vaccines
caused neurological damage to an infant ultimately diagnosed
with autism. Waters & Kraus is leading a consortium of ten
firms in as many states that are actively prosecuting cases of
this nature (firms listed below). Andy Waters, the lead attorney
in the cases, announced that his firm is now in possession of a
previously unreleased confidential report authored by Centers
for Disease Control scientists which studied autism as a
potential neurological injury caused by mercury in children's
vaccines.
A different version of the report was made public and has
been cited by the recent Institute of Medicine study as
inconclusive on the issue of whether the mercury-based vaccine
preservative known as thimerosal has contributed to cause a
nationwide epidemic of regressive autism and other neurological
disorders in small children. The confidential version of the
study, however, clearly demonstrated that an exposure to more
than 62.5 micrograms of mercury within the first three months of
life significantly increased a child's risk of developing
autism. Specifically, the study found a 2.48 times increased
risk of autism - that is to say, children with the exposure were
more than twice as likely to develop autism as children not
exposed.
In the United States, courts of law have generally held that
a relative increased risk of 2.0 or higher is sufficient to
substantiate that a given exposure causes disease. As but one
example, in the case of Cook v. United States, 545 F.Supp. 306,
at 308 (Northern District - California 1982) the Court stated
that, "in a vaccine case, a relative risk greater than 2.0
establishes that there is a greater than 50% chance that the
injury was caused by the vaccine."
Waters indicated that, in many of the cases his firm has
evaluated, including the case filed in a Texas state court on
behalf of the Counter family, the affected child received more
than 62.5 micrograms of mercury through pediatric vaccines in
the first three months of life.
The confidential report, which was obtained by the SAFEMINDS
support and advocacy group, states: "As for the exposure
evaluated at 3 months of age, we found increasing risks of
'neurological developmental disorders' with increasing
cumulative exposure to thimerosal ... within the group of
'developmental disorders'... for the sub-group called 'specific
delays,' and within this sub-group for the specific disorder
'developmental speech disorder,' and for 'autism,' 'stuttering'
and 'attention deficit disorder.'"
The report also contained the graph depicted below which
illustrated the report's findings of a child's increasing risk
of developing the neurological symptoms of autism after
receiving increasing amounts of thimerosal.
Graph 3: Relative risk - 95 % CI of Autism after different
exposure levels of thimerosal at 3 months of age, NCK & GHC
(see www.vaccineinfo.net/autismHg.htm to view graph)
Waters pointed out that the confidential study's lead author,
Thomas Verstraeten, has since left the Centers for Disease
Control and is now employed by GlaxoSmithKline, a manufacturer
of thimerosal-containing vaccines for many years that is a
defendant in numerous suits pending nationwide. "We have
asked GlaxoSmithKline to provide Mr. Verstraeten's deposition in
order to understand if conflict of interest issues may have
played a role in the CDC's decision to keep this report
confidential, and specifically, their failure to reveal it to
the Institute of Medicine."
Waters called the report's contents and the fact that it was
kept from the public as "shocking, but unfortunately not
surprising, given the political influence of pharmaceutical
companies and the tremendous liability they face if they are
forced to compensate thousands of families for the costs of care
that these children require." Waters added that "no
amount of money can give these children back the potential that
they were born with, and no amount of money will comfort the
parents that watched helplessly as their children literally just
slipped away." The purpose of the lawsuits his firm is
currently prosecuting, said Waters, is "to bring to the
surface the truth on this issue, a truth that government
agencies seem unwilling to admit, perhaps for fear that parents
will stop vaccinating their children, and to force the companies
that profited from this disastrous mistake to shoulder the
responsibility that so many families now bear on their own,
often without even the aid of health insurance benefits."
Media inquiries should be directed to Melissa Miles at
214-357-6244. Client inquiries should be directed to Victoria
Gibson at 800-226-9880, or to the firms listed below.
Other firms working with Waters & Kraus to prosecute
individual cases involving thimerosal exposure are:
ANDERSON & KRIEGER, APLC 40925 County Center Drive, Suite
210 Temecula, California 92591 Telephone: 909-296-5090
DOGAN & WILKINSON 726 Delmas Avenue Pascagoula,
Mississippi 39567 Telephone: 228-762-2272
DORAN & MURPHY, LLP 1234 Delaware Avenue Buffalo, New
York 14209 Telephone: 716-884-2000
EVERT & WEATHERSBY, L.L.C. 3405 Piedmont Road, Suite 225
Atlanta, Georgia 30305-1764 Telephone : 404-233-8718
HENDRICKSON & LONG 214 Capital Street P.O. Box 11070
Charleston, W. VA 25339 Telephone: 304-346-5500
JONES, MARTIN, PARRIS, & TESSENER LAW OFFICES, PLLC 410
Glenwood Ave., Suite 200 Raleigh, North Carolina 27603
Telephone: 919-821-0005
LEACH, SCHWARZ & STRASSBERG 11 Bala Ave. Bala Cynwyd,
Pennsylvania 19004 Telephone: 610-668-7964
MARTZELL & BICKFORD 338 Lafayette Street New Orleans,
Louisianna 70130 Telephone: 504-581-9065
WISE & JULIAN, PC 3555 College Avenue Alton, Illinois
62002 Telephone: 618-462-2600
PROVE (Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education)
prove@vaccineinfo.net
http://vaccineinfo.net/
Back to News
|
