Senate Bill To Limit Pharma Liability for Mercury Poisoning

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Epidemics

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A provision introduced by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist in the Protecting America in the War on Terror Act, introduced in January this year as Senate Bill S-3, will effectively limit the liability of pharmaceutical manufacturers including Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Aventis, Weyeth and Eli Lilly, for having caused widespread poisoning of children resulting in damage to normal brain development. As a matter of fact, an epidemic of autism is sweeping especially those countries that have made childhood vaccinations mandatory and have used mercury-laced vaccines for decades.

Although the Centers for Disease Control knew of the danger at least since the early 1990s, elimination of mercury in vaccines was slow and the substance is still in several vaccines, including the flu shots all Americans are supposed to receive each year.

Mercury has been implicated in many illnesses, being a systemic poison to the human body. Poul Moeller, a retired food chemist, has studied the implications of mercury's presence in tooth fillings, vaccines, and in many foods on the human body and is appalled that the substance has not been banished despite huge amounts of evidence of its dangers.

Read here about the Senate Bill and - at the end of the article - a recent comment to an EPA subcommittee on mercury, by Poul Moeller.

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Congress Bill Will Allow Drug Companies to Continue Poisoning Children with Mercury-Tainted Vaccines

(Found here)
Previously published on: www.commondreams.org
Published on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 by Knight Ridder

Playing Politics at Kids' Expense
Bill would insulate pharmaceutical firms from liability
by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has buried a provision in the "Protecting America in the War on Terror Act" to insulate the pharmaceutical industry from liability for venal actions that may have poisoned an entire generation of Americans.

Mounting evidence suggests that Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative in children's vaccines, may be responsible for the exponential growth of autism, attention deficit disorder, speech delays and other childhood neurological disorders now epidemic in the United States.

Prior to 1989, American infants generally received three vaccinations. In the early 1990s, public-health officials dramatically increased the number of Thimerosal-containing vaccinations without considering the cumulative impact of the mercury load on developing brains.

Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative in children's vaccines, may be responsible for the exponential growth of autism.

Warning Issued

In a 1991 memo, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck's vaccination programs, warned the president of the company's vaccination division that 6-month-old children administered the shots on schedule would suffer mercury exposures 87 times the government safety standard (400 times the current U.S. government's safe level). He recommended that Thimerosal be discontinued, "especially when used on infants and children."

Merck ignored Hilleman's warning and, for eight years, government officials added seven additional shots for children containing Thimerosal.

Mercury is a known brain poison, and autism rates began rising dramatically in children who were administered the new vaccine regimens. A decade ago the American Academy of Pediatrics estimated the autism rate among American children to be 1 in 2,500. Today, the CDC places the autism rate at 1 in 166, or one in 80 boys. Additionally, one in every six children is now diagnosed with a related neurological disorder.

In 1998 the CDC's lead Thimerosal researcher, Dr. Thomas Verstraeten, complained to his colleagues in a secret memo that, despite rerunning and rethinking the research, the links between Thimerosal and autism "just won't go away."

Secret Meeting

In 2000, CDC, FDA and pharmaceutical companies called a secret meeting to review Verstraeten's findings. According to transcripts, participants were alarmed about the undeniable link between the mercury preservative and autism. Dr. Bill Weil told the group, "You can play with (the results) all you want. They are statistically significant."

Dr. Richard Johnston acknowledged he feared his grandchild getting vaccinated. But the group was most concerned with keeping the findings secret.

Numerous animal, DNA, epidemiological and other studies point to Thimerosal as the culprit in America's epidemic of neurological disorders.

Autistic children have been shown to have higher mercury loads than nonautistics, and there have been reports of significant improvements in some brain-injured children by removing mercury from their bodies.

Most of the symptoms of autism are similar to the symptoms of mercury poisoning. Recently, scientists have been able to induce autism in certain mice by exposing them to Thimerosal.

In a recent study, former FDA scientist Dr. Jill James uncovered a scientific link that helps explain why Thimerosal injures some children and not others. That study found that many autistic children are genetically deficient in their capacity to produce glutathione, an antioxidant generated in the brain that helps remove mercury from the body, a harmless difference until the child is exposed to large quantities of mercury.

Porter Bridges' experience is typical. In 1993, this healthy 4-month-old slipped into a coma hours after receiving his vaccines.

Today, 11-year-old Porter is autistic, hyperactive and severely brain damaged. He requires minute-to-minute supervision, is frequently afflicted with violent seizures and is not yet toilet-trained.

After a seven-year legal fight, the U.S. government acknowledged that Porter was damaged by his vaccines. There are now 520,000 autistics in the United States with 40,000 new cases each year.

High Cost of Care

The cost of caring for autistic children is conservatively $40,000 annually. Families with children with autism and other neurological diseases have filed more than 4,200 claims in the special federal "Vaccine Court." Some plaintiffs have also filed in trial courts.

Some Drug Makers Act

Thimerosal defendants include Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Aventis, Weyeth and Eli Lilly. Frist's newly proposed "anti-terror" legislation would create insurmountable burdens of proof for plaintiffs in these cases and forbid states from banning Thimerosal.

Drug makers wary of liability have reduced Thimerosal in children's vaccines in recent years, with the exception of Chiron and Aventis' pediatric flu vaccine. Mercury-laced vaccine stocks were given to children until the end of 2003.

Thimerosal's inventor, Eli Lilly, donated $226,000 to Frist's national Republican Senate Campaign Committee in 2002 and bought 5,000 copies of Frist's book on bioterrorism. Congress will vote on Frist's bill in the near future.

Instead of demanding the immediate removal of Thimerosal from all vaccines, and making the drug industry help defray the public and private costs of caring for injured children, Frist's bill would give the industry a free ride at public expense.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper and a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

© 2005 Knight Ridder

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Here is a recent submission by Danish Chemist Poul Moeller, to the EPA:

From: Poul Møller
Date: 23 mar 2005 14:45:21 Europe/Copenhagen
To: ORD.Docket@epa.gov
Cc: drumm.heather@epa.gov
Subject: Attention Docket ID No. ORD-2004-0021, (not accepted in address). Chemistry of mercury helps mentally ill people.

Poul Møller, Chemist, M.Sc, Denmark.
e-mail: poulmoeller@mail1.stofanet.dk

SUBMISSION OF A COMMENT TO THE MERCURY SUBCOMMITTEE MEETING, March 29, 2005, with the title:
CHEMISTRY OF MERCURY, e.g. EX AMALGAM HELPS US TO UNDERSTAND, PREVENT AND PARTLY/FULLY CURE MENTAL DISEASES.

Dear Sirs,

The Health Commissioner of the EU said in a speech recently: "My contribution to the EU-growth will be to fight mental diseases thereby delaying retiring". Supporting him I informed of the immense toxification of our people by amalgam and of the possibility to help the mentally ill as well as Society.

Universities neglect the problem, why medical students have never learned, what happens when amalgam is placed in our teeth, nor do they understand the consequences of the chemical aggressivity of mercury, making up 50% or more of dental amalgam.

As the problem is international I send it to you, too. When politically accepted this paper contains the deathblow of amalgam and any use of mercury in medicine, vaccines and all other industrial products.

I include an attachment with the text.

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See also:

Bush Uses FDA To Shield Big Pharma From Lawsuits 
May 12, 2006.
By Evelyn Pringle
In January 2006, the FDA announced the Bush administration's latest gift to Big Pharma in a statement that said people who believe they have been injured by drugs approved by the FDA should not be allowed to sue drug companies in state courts. "We think that if your company complies with the FDA processes, if you bring forward the benefits and risks of your drug, and let your information be judged through a process with highly trained scientists, you should not be second-guessed by state courts that don't have the same scientific knowledge," said Scott Gottlieb, the FDA's deputy commissioner for medical and