A Dragon By The Tail
by Lisa Reagan. Thanks to Lujene G. Clark

On the eve of an historic, billion-dollar world vaccination campaign, a leaked transcript ignites questions of vaccine safety and research corruption.

Meanwhile, US senators fast-track a bill to protect vaccine manufacturers from litigation. With millions of lives at stake, and billions of dollars to lose, will a merger of philanthropy, big business and compromised science win an epic race between corporate agendas and medical ethics?

In this world exclusive report, byronchild Magazine exposes how the most powerful medical research bodies in the United States compromise their vaccine safety research for vested interests, as they assist in a global vaccine policy, while a bill looms in the background to protect it all.

On January 24, 2005 -- the same day the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) announced the receipt of $750 million for its historic world vaccination campaign -- seven US Senators introduced Senate Bill 3. The bill is an unprecedented act giving comprehensive liability protections to vaccine manufacturers, restricting Freedom of Information Act applications on drug/vaccine safety, and pre-empting states' rights to ban mercury from children's vaccines, all under the bill's official title: "Protecting America in the War on Terror Act of 2005".

Meanwhile in Texas, after receiving an internal transcript that allegedly proves the Institutes of Medicine's report denying a link between childhood vaccines and autism last year was "predetermined", a US District Court judge has ordered the world's "big five" vaccine manufacturers to "produce any and all documents relating to payments made to, or stock ownership" by the seventeen members of the IOM's Immunization and Safety Review Committee.

A court document submitting the IOM's leaked transcript as an exhibit in the first civil juried lawsuit against the vaccine manufacturers states the transcript proves the IOM committee "predetermined the necessity of not finding causality between vaccines and autism and/or neurological injury" in its official reports on the issue.

Judge T. John Ward also ordered the vaccine manufacturers to produce all communications with "members of the World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, the Institute of Medicine, the Brighton Collaboration, or the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization relating to the issue whether the thimerosal contained in pediatric vaccines causes autism or other neurological disorders."

When the defendant's legal counsel balked at the amount of expense involved in producing such extensive documentation for the court, Judge Ward reassured the defense of their use for both defendants and plaintiffs alike of the more than 300 pending lawsuits "involving claims related to the use of thimerosal in pediatric vaccines" waiting to be tried in the US.

Vaccine manufacturers Aventis Pasteur, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Wyeth and Eli Lilly and Co. are cited as defendants in the lawsuit brought by the parents of a child who developed autism after receiving mandatory routine childhood immunizations.

The same IOM reports denying a link between vaccines and the country's autism epidemic have been used:

· to endorse standardized case definitions for Adverse Events Following Immunizations for "global dissemination";
· as justification for Senate Bill 3's sweeping provisions and protections;
as a cause for no further federal monies to be spent on research of the potential vaccine/autism link;
· as a reason to silence media inquiries into vaccine safety issues;
· and as a defense for dismissing over 4,500 petitions for vaccine injuries in a federal court.

Is it possible that a closed meeting transcript alleged as proof of a ploy to ignore vaccine risks, a near billion-dollar grant for a global vaccination campaign, emerging lawsuits for vaccine injuries, and a sweeping federal bill to protect vaccine manufacturers are unrelated? Is it possible that in spite of US Congressional hearings and reports citing widespread conflicts of interest between federal policy makers and the vaccine industry that Senate Bill 3 will defy the US Constitution's provisions for state and civil rights in order to shield vaccine manufacturers from liability?

And finally, how will a world vaccine policy influenced by allegedly "predetermined" safety reports implemented through a global alliance of international governments and vaccine manufacturers with a fund of billions headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, support or protect the health and human rights of targeted Third-World country peoples? History of the IOM's immunization and Safety Review Committee Insight to these questions may lie in the pivotal year of 1999, a year preceded by a decade of declining vaccine sales, major breakups within the manufacturing industry, increased requirements for routine childhood vaccines, a growing autism epidemic, and researchers and media reports questioning the safety of vaccines and their possible link to autism.

In 1999, as a US Congressional Government Reform Committee initiated an investigation into the rampant conflicts of interest between federal vaccine policy makers and manufacturers, a global rescue effort of the sinking vaccine industry began with the formation of GAVI.

Originally funded by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates through his Seattle-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI's partnership of international governments and vaccine manufacturers salvaged lagging sales through an overhauled world vaccination campaign that placed GAVI, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, at the center of the reorganized alliance.

Also formed in 1999 were the international Brighton Collaboration and the WHO Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety.

Brighton's sole purpose was to create standardized case definitions for Adverse Events Following Immunizations for "global dissemination".

Brighton's steering committee members currently hail from the US FDA, CDC, and Aventis Pasteur, a vaccine manufacturer and federal lawsuit defendant.

Brighton's website does not include autism among its listed adverse events.

The WHO Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety has "concluded that there is currently no evidence of mercury toxicity in infants, children, or adults exposed to thimerosal in vaccines" and "that current WHO immunization policy with respect to thimerosal containing vaccines should not be changed."

The Brighton Collaboration has been cited as being "fraught with pitfalls and merges regulators and the regulated into an indistinguishable group."

"I am very concerned about the development of the Brighton Collaboration," stated US Congressional Representative Dave Weldon, MD, (R-FL) at an Autism One Conference in May 2004. "Particularly troubling is the fact that serving on the panels defining what constitutes an adverse reaction to a vaccine, are vaccine manufacturers. What is even worse is the fact that some of these committees are chaired by vaccine manufacturers. It is totally inappropriate for a manufacturer of vaccines to be put in the position of determining what is and is not an adverse reaction to their product. Do we allow GM, Ford and Chrysler to define the safety of their automobiles?"

In 1999, with GAVI's international partnership and Bill Gates' billions on the way to rescue the industry, the CDC hired the IOM's Immunizations and Safety Review Committee to examine multiple "vaccine safety challenges".

In its public report, the CDC specifically sited a 1998 British Lancet study recommending more research into a potential link between the Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism, negative press, public information vaccine conferences, the Rotavirus vaccine recall and seven congressional hearings questioning vaccine safety as impetus to employ the IOM.

However, the CDC's ability to objectively and fairly evaluate vaccine risks has been denounced by a three-year US Congressional investigation: "To date, studies conducted or funded by the CDC that purportedly dispute any correlation between autism and vaccine injury have been of poor design, under-powered, and fatally flawed. The CDC's rush to support and promote such research is reflective of a philosophical conflict in looking fairly at emerging theories and clinical data related to adverse reactions from vaccinations. The CDC in general and the National Immunization Program in particular are conflicted in their duties to monitor the safety of vaccines, while also charged with the responsibility of purchasing vaccines for resale as well as promoting increased immunization rates," states the Congressional report.

"They serve as their own watchdog, neither common nor desirable when seeking unbiased research," Weldon has stated in describing the CDC. "An association between vaccines and autism would force CDC officials to admit that their policies irreparably damaged thousands of children. Who among us would easily accept such a conclusion about ourselves? Yet, this is what the CDC is asked to do," Weldon said.

When byronchild asked CDC spokesperson Curtis Allen for a copy of the contract that would detail the agreement between the IOM and the CDC, Allen stated that the contract would be available only in a heavily "redacted" or blacked-out format.

The IOM stated "no comment" to byronchild about the leaked transcript or its use in the pending civil court case.

On 11th January 2001, the IOM's Immunization and Safety Review committee gathered for its first organizational meeting in Washington, DC. It is this meeting's transcript that has been submitted as an exhibit by Waters and Kraus, a Dallas, Texas law firm.

Do Something About Autism Now!
Subscribe!
I would like to obtain full report