Monday, December 26, 2005
By Rob Zaleski
...snip...
A senior state chemist, Wagnitz is making health experts uneasy because of his public statements urging people to think twice before getting a flu shot this season. He thinks the shots are especially risky for pregnant women and young kids.
Why? Because about 95 percent of the doses being distributed this winter contain thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative that Wagnitz and others believe is responsible for the startling increase in autism cases in the United States since the early 1990s.
The federal government says that's hokum, noting that despite years of study there's no scientific evidence that mercury in vaccines causes autism. However, as a precaution, the U.S. Public Health Service in the late 1990s asked manufacturers to start phasing thimerosal out of childhood vaccines.
In fact, both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say flu shots are absolutely essential for pregnant women and infants 6 to 23 months old. As for potential risks, they claim that the amount of thimerosal in a child's dose is so tiny it poses virtually no risk at all - a claim Wagnitz says is "pure propaganda."
Still, health experts admit they have more questions than answers about autism. As the National Institute of Mental Health noted in its 2005 annual report on autism to Congress, "There are no effective means to prevent the disorder, no fully effective treatment and no cure."
Wagnitz, 52, has been speaking out about the possible link between vaccines and autism for several years now, ever since his daughter Josie, now 8, was diagnosed with autism in 2001.
To say he was shocked would be a colossal understatement, says Wagnitz, "because, frankly, I'd never even heard of autism before that. I was this trusting person who just did what the doctor told me to do."
Then he began doing some research, and the deeper he dug, the more troubled he became. After doing "some simple fifth-grade math," Wagnitz says he figured out that the amount of mercury in flu shots - 50,000 micrograms per liter in the multi-dose vials - is 250 times the amount that's considered safe for liquid hazardous waste.
That's when he got mad and began started asking some very pointed questions. So have a lot of other people - including Robert Kennedy Jr. who, like Wagnitz, believes that all vaccines should be thimerosal-free despite the higher costs involved.
They want to know why, according to some scientists, the estimated number of cases of autism has increased a mind-boggling 1,500 percent since 1991, when the number of childhood vaccinations doubled.
And they want to know why one in every 166 children has autism today compared to one in every 2,500 in 1991.
"The government says they're just doing a better job of noticing it," says Wagnitz. But anyone who's been around autistic kids and knows how loud and disruptive they can be finds that extremely hard to believe, he says.
"I mean, like Robert Kennedy Jr. said, 'Missing a kid with autism is like missing a train wreck.' So when they say they're doing a better job of finding them, I say, 'Then where are all the 30-year-olds and 40-year-olds with autism?'"
Though he certainly doesn't relish the criticism, Wagnitz says his skin is "thicker than leather right now" and that he'll continue to speak out until all vaccines are thimerosal-free.
"No one wants to talk about my message. All they want to do is destroy the messenger," he says. "I mean, liquid waste needs to go to a hazardous waste site if it contains more than 200 parts per billion of mercury. So anyone with common sense would say you don't want to be injecting people with 250 times more mercury than hazardous waste.
"What more do you need to know?"
E-mail: rzaleski@madison.com
NEWPORT NEWS, VA — The Pentagon never told Congress about more than 20,000 hospitalizations involving troops who took the anthrax vaccine from 1998 through 2000, despite repeated promises that such cases would be publicly disclosed. Instead, generals and Defense Department officials claimed that fewer than 100 people were hospitalized or became seriously ill after receiving the shot, according to an investigation by the Daily Press of Newport News.
Written policies required that public reports be filed for hospitalizations, serious illnesses and cases where someone missed 24 hours or more of duty. But only a few of the cases were actually reported; the rest were withheld from Congress and the public, according to records obtained by the Daily Press. Critics of the vaccine, veterans' advocates and congressional staffers say the Pentagon's deliberate low-balling of hospitalizations helped persuade Congress and the public that the vaccine was safe.
Withholding the full record contributed to a shorter list of government-recognized side effects for the drug, which gave patients and physicians a false idea of what might constitute a vaccine-related illness or problem. Repeated evidence of the same adverse side effect after a vaccination is one of the most telling signs of a systematic problem, vaccine safety experts say.
The newspaper found three cases of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), known as Lou Gehrig's disease, that the military hadn't reported. The disease destroys muscles and nerves, is always fatal, and rarely hits people younger than 45. One of the three cases involves Navy Capt. Denis Army of Virginia Beach, who died in 2000 after developing symptoms less than a week after his first anthrax vaccination.
His widow filed the first public acknowledgement of his death and its connection to the vaccine after talking to a Daily Press reporter and learning that she could file a report with the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
Col. John Grabenstein, director of the military's vaccine agency, said no one from the military intentionally misled Congress or the public. The 20,765 hospitalizations merely followed vaccinations in time, without documented proof of a cause-and-effect relationship, he claimed. However, the data that the Daily Press used to document the underreporting came from an unpublished report that Grabenstein supplied in response to its request.
Quarterly analysis of the vaccine's effects ended just as the nation's only manufacturer, BioPort, Inc. regained its license in 2002, after a 1998 shutdown by federal inspectors who found safety and other problems. The decision to discontinue the quarterly monitoring end systematic long-term studies of the health of those who have taken the drug, the newspaper notes. Most studies that the Pentagon cites as support for the vaccine's safety involve monitoring that lasted no longer than a few months.
continue at Link
http://www.vermontguardian.com/dailies/122005/1220.shtml
After the quarterly reviews stopped, more than a million troops were forced to take the vaccine — until a federal judge ruled last year that the drug had never been adequately licensed for protection against anthrax use in warfare. He ordered the military to make vaccination voluntary. The Pentagon is appealing that ruling. A decision is expected by February.
Treatment Options for Mercury/Metal Toxicity in Autism and Related Developmental Disabilities: Consensus Position Paper
Purpose
During the last several years, there has been growing clinical and scientific evidence that most children with autism suffer from mercury/metal toxicity. Furthermore, there have been many reports from physicians and parents that removal of mercury and other toxic metals can be very beneficial to children with autism, sometimes resulting in a major decrease in autistic symptoms. A wide variety of detoxifying agents and protocols have been used, and the purpose of this paper is to discuss the pros and cons of the different treatments available. Overall, our consensus position is that removal of mercury and other toxic metals is one of the most beneficial treatments for autism and related disorders. More research is needed, but effective treatments are available now. Each child is an individual, so this report presents general guidelines rather than specific recommendations.
Evidence of Mercury Toxicity in Children with Autism
continued at link
http://www.eas.asu.edu/~autism/DANConsensusReport.htm
see also www.AutismResearchInstitute.com
Dec. 21, 2005 by Phyllis Schlafly
Federal judges have just hit parents with a triple-whammy. Two appellate
courts held that parents have no right to stop offensive,
privacy-invading interrogation of their own children in public schools,
and in a third case the Supreme Court indicated that it is not going to
do anything to protect parents' rights concerning schools.
It has become painfully clear that many courts have adopted the notion
that the "village" (i.e., in these cases, the schools) should raise
children. Judges prefer to side with schools and against parents.
When a New Jersey mother was horrified to learn that her daughter and
classmates had been asked how many times they tried to kill themselves,
she filed suit to protect the rights of parents and pupils. She won on
the first appeal to the Third Circuit in C.N. v. Ridgewood Board of
Education, but the school was relentless in litigation to assert its
primary authority and the court finally ruled in favor of the school.
At issue was a 156-question survey called "Profiles of Student Life:
Attitudes and Behaviors," which probed students about their personal
lives and activities. The survey included questions about sex, drugs,
suicide, incriminating behavior, spirituality, tolerance, and other
personal matters.
Questions 92-93 in this survey given to Ridgewood children demanded to
know "how many times" they "had used cocaine" in their lives, or during
the last 12 months, and the answer choices were 0, 1, 2, 3-5, 6-9,
10-19, 20-39, and 40+. This gave students the false impression that
casual use of cocaine is common and acceptable.
Misleading questions can have a powerful effect. Our legal system
recognizes this by providing dozens of reasons for lawyers to object to
questions in court in order to protect their witnesses from having to
answer improper questions.
Children lack the maturity to tell the difference between questions they
should or should not answer. Children are trained in school that they
must answer the teacher's questions or face discipline or a poor grade.
Ask an adult when he stopped beating his wife and expect to be told to
get lost. Ask a child in the classroom how often he takes drugs or has
sex, and the child will think he ought to answer.
But judges who routinely uphold lawyers' objections to improper
questions in court think it is okay to ask offensive questions of
children in school. In the Ridgewood decision, the court agreed with the
parents that the students' participation in the survey may have been
mandatory, and conceded that the leading questions could be suggestive
to students, but nevertheless ruled that parents' and pupils' rights
were not violated.
The Ninth Circuit went even further, marking the school door as the line
where parents' rights end and the "village" takes over. In Fields v.
Palmdale School District in November, the judges ruled that the right of
parents "does not extend beyond the threshold of the school door."
Just last Term, the Supreme Court devoted time and energy to a silly
lawsuit over the replacement of a male teacher as coach of a girls'
basketball team. When a teacher has a complaint, the Supreme Court
springs to attention; but when a parent has a complaint about
indoctrination of her child, the Court doesn't even want to hear about it.
In the same 30 days as the Ridgewood and Palmdale cases, the U.S.
Supreme Court refused to review another parental rights case in Crowley
v. McKinney. The High Court is spending its time this Term on a slew of
cases about prisoners' rights (even about the alleged right of prisoners
to read pornographic magazines) rather than hear a single case about
parents' rights to raise their children.
In Crowley v. McKinney, the Seventh Circuit ruled against the parent,
saying that the school has a constitutional right of "the autonomy of
educational institutions." The parent had appealed to the Supreme Court
to recognize the "settled law" of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, which in
1925 recognized the constitutional right of parents to control the
education of their own children.
Even though recognizing the Supreme Court's holding in Pierce that
"Oregon's project of forcing all children to attend public schools
implied a hostility to private education that had no footing in American
traditions or educational policy," the Seventh Circuit ignored its
application to the current case. Does forcing children to answer
questions about sex, drugs and suicide have a "footing in American
traditions"? Of course not.
It hasn't grabbed the attention of the Supreme Court that the Third,
Seventh and Ninth Circuits have ignored the settled law of Pierce. You
can bet the High Court would take a case that requires testing
schoolchildren for use of illegal drugs, yet the Court refuses to face
the issue of requiring schoolchildren to participate in a classroom
survey that suggests doing drugs is normal behavior.
Teachers are not required to answer these intrusive questions, so why
are our children? Evidently parents are the only ones who do not benefit
from equal protection of the law.
