The other special provisions tucked in the bill to reward other big Republican contributors are almost as disgusting. I must admit that the amendment protecting the Eli Lily Co. from future lawsuits is a fine example of really fast service for a contributor. It was just a few weeks ago that The New York Times ran the first serious look at Thimerosal, the vaccine preservative that may be related to autism, and -- wham, bam -- no problem for the Lily company. (And don't give me that bull about how it's just an arbitration panel, parents can still sue, yaddda, yadda, yadda. The purpose of that stinking amendment could not possibly be clearer. The Lily Co. bought itself a very nice piece of legislation indeed.)"
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=14125


Enough pork to gag a maggot
Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate

11.26.02 - AUSTIN, Texas -- OK, Republicans, justify this. I want to hear your explanations for why the Republican leadership went against the will of 318 members to grant an unconscionable gift to corporations that set up offshore tax shelters to avoid paying their U.S. taxes. Come on, Rush, I really want to hear this one -- and do, please, include the word "patriotism." According to Citizens for Tax Justice, the offshore tax-shelter dodge costs this country as much as $50 billion annually. An amendment to the Homeland Security bill would not have shut down the loophole -- though Lord knows that needs to be done -– but it would have prevented rewarding these financial traitors with government contracts. The House leadership -- that would be your speaker, Dennis Hastert, and your majority leader, Dick Armey -- going against the will of both the House and the Senate, took out the "Wellstone Amendment," sponsored by the late populist senator. It would have prevented runaway companies, those that set up mailboxes in Bermuda in order to avoid paying their taxes, from getting government contracts related to homeland security. They replaced the Wellstone Amendment with a toothless provision that affects no company.  The polite term for these corporate tax-dodgers is "corporate inversion" or "corporate expatriates," but they are tax cheats, pure and simple. They don't move anywhere, they just get a shell address so they won't have to pay their share of the taxes. And guess who gets stuck paying their share instead? And now we're going to reward these tax cheats with government contracts.

Here's Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts on how it works: "Let's take Tyco, formerly of New Hampshire, now of Bermuda, for example. Tyco avoids paying $400 million a year in U.S. taxes by setting up a shell headquarters offshore, but it was awarded $182 million in lucrative defense and homeland security-related contracts in 2001 alone. If Tyco had just paid its tax bill, Congress could easily have paid for 400 explosive detection systems (EDS), which are badly needed to protect U.S. travelers at airports around the nation.

"Or let's examine corporate expatriate Ingersoll-Rand, formerly of New Jersey, and now also in Bermuda. Ingersoll-Rand earned as much last year in U.S. defense and homeland security federal contracts as it avoids in U.S. taxes annually merely by renting a mailbox in Bermuda and calling it ‘home'. If Ingersoll-Rand paid its U.S. tax bill, Congress could easily afford to fund the Cyberspace Warning Intelligence Network, estimated to cost $30 million, or it could also buy 400,000 gas masks for American citizens."

If this is what Republicans want to stand for, fine with me. Their leadership has thwarted all efforts to have a debate and vote on a separate bill, the Corporate Patriot Enforcement Act, a bipartisan bill to deny benefits to corporations that flee to tax havens. In Texas, the home of the blunt, we call legislators who sell out the people in order to kiss the butts of their campaign contributors "whores."

And why would Republicans do such a despicable thing? Well, let's look at the lobbyists hired to fight the offshore provision: former Republican presidential candidate Robert Dole (paid by Tyco), former House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer, Bush family confidant Charlie Black, former
House Appropriations Committee Chair Robert Livingston, former Sen. Dennis DeConcini (one of the Keating Five) and Reagan White house Chief of Staff Kenneth Duberstein.

Here's the good news: If the people ever put up enough money, we could get exactly the same team to argue for our side. That's what I mean by "whores".

The D's, plus Sen. John McCain, tried to get this and other obnoxious special-interest provisions taken out of the bill. So the R's promised to "tone down" the offensive amendments with corrective legislation -- sometime next year. But the incoming House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has already announced that he agreed only to "consider" such changes, not actually make them. Don't put any money on this prospect.

The Homeland Security bill was 35 pages long when President Bush, who had long opposed it, did a 180 in the summer and pretended he invented it. He decided to support it instead of ignoring the proposal by Democrats (one of those "down the memory hole" moments for the D.C. press corps, which keeps announcing the bill's passage is "a major victory" for the Bush administration). By then, the "Homeland Security" bill had become a 435-page behemoth, so larded with pork and special-interest legislation that Sen. Robert Byrd (no stranger to pork) kept dropping the triple-phone-book sized bill on his desk, repeatedly calling it "this mon-stros-ity."

It's one thing to pass this kind of special interest legislation. It's another to call it "patriotism." That could gag a maggot.

© 2002 Creators Syndicate

Leaves'Average guy' image worked
By Carrie Hedges, USA TODAY

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/2004-11-03-daniels-p
rofile_x.htm  (scroll to the bottom)

Millionaire businessman Mitch Daniels, who was White House budget director under President Bush, won the Indiana governorship after touring the state in a recreational vehicle and promising to do "everything possible to make sure that the next job is created in Indiana and not somewhere else."       Republican candidate for governor of Indiana Mitch Daniels talks to supporters during a victory rally in Indianapolis.
      Darron Cummings, AP

Daniels, 55, who had never before run for office, showed strong campaign skills as he shook hands and promised to protect jobs. His "average guy" image seemed to work with fellow Hoosiers, and his well-known RV doubled as campaign headquarters. His campaign motto was "My Main Mitch," Bush's term for him.

Daniels was nicknamed "The Blade" by Bush because of his cost-slashing reputation as director of the Office of Management and Budget. His campaign focused on Indiana's economic troubles. His "time for a change" theme seemed to resonate with voters after 16 years of Democratic governors. He ran a tight race with incumbent Democrat Joe Kernan, a former lieutenant governor who took the office in 2003 after Gov. Frank O'Bannon died of a stroke.

As governor, Daniels will have to deal with an $830 million budget deficit. He has said he would work to stem the tide of fleeing businesses and to keep university graduates from leaving Indiana in search of better opportunities. Daniels was chief of staff to Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and adviser to President Reagan in the mid-1980s. He returned to Indiana to become a top executive at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. An elder at his local Presbyterian church in Indianapolis, Daniels founded the Oaks Academy, a Christian inner-city school. He is married and has four grown daughters.

 

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usthim243016566nov24,0,470
7215.story


A Loss For Parents Of Autistic Kids Suits vs. drug makers blocked
By Thomas Frank
WASHINGTON BUREAU

November 24, 2002

Washington - Kathy Kilpatrick knows her 6-year-old daughter, Mary Kate, will never experience a normal life, because autism makes her almost unable to express feelings and needs. The privation has long saddened Kilpatrick. But last week the Jericho  woman grew irate when Republicans in Congress denied her one more thing - the chance to hold someone immediately accountable.

Republicans put a last-minute provision in the homeland-security bill  that blocks efforts by Kilpatrick and thousands of parents of autistic children to sue manufacturers of a children's-vaccine additive that may cause autism. The provision diverts a potential tidal wave of claims - none of them  proven - that experts say could rival lawsuits filed over asbestos. Republicans say lawsuits might ruin companies whose capacity to produce vaccines is essential to fight the heightened threat of a biochemical terrorist attack.

But experts and critics call the provision a back-door gift to politically influential drug companies, particularly Eli Lilly and Co., whose chairman, Sidney Taurel, is on the White House Advisory Council on Homeland Security. The provision would extend the liability protection  now given for vaccines to vaccine additives.

One additive faces serious medical questions and legal claims:thimerosal, invented by Lilly and used until recently in many common children's vaccines. An estimated 150 individual autism lawsuits and thousands more under preparation target Lilly.

But now families like the Kilpatricks must file claims with a federal  compensation fund that pays medical costs and up to $250,000 more for pain and suffering, but makes no finding of fault. Plaintiffs can reject settlement offers and sue in court, but face tougher legal standards for
winning punitive damages.

It's the corporate protection - not the cash limit - that enrages  Kilpatrick.

"They need to be held accountable. The thought that my daughter could be  living a normal life - she could be on a soccer team, she could be going to birthday parties, she could fall in love some day - none of those things are going to happen. Ever," she said.

Experts were stunned at how the liability provision was rammed through  Congress with little deliberation, circumventing the usual committee process. Lawrence Gostin, director of the Center for Law and the Public's Health a t Georgetown and Johns Hopkins universities, agreed the liability protection should help assure vaccine supplies. But, he added, "We could have also done it by just giving a trillion dollars to the vaccine  industry." "Liability is there for important and complex reasons," Gostin said, citing negligence prevention and victim compensation.

The real problem with the U.S. vaccine supply is not that lawsuits threaten manufacturers, Gostin said, but that there is no national strategy to ensure that important vaccines are produced. "If the sole concern was the national interest, there would have been a full and open debate about the best way to ensure stable investment and procurement of vaccines," Gostin said. But that wasn't done when Republicans took the one-page liability provision out of a stalled bill on vaccines and added it to the 484-page homeland-security bill charging toward approval.

"It's one small item plucked out in the most crude possible way," Gostin said.

Democrats called it payback to the pharmaceutical industry, which has given Republicans $14 million since January 2001, and $5.2 million to Democrats, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. They also questioned the influence of Mitch Daniels, Eli Lilly's former director of North American operations who is director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Management and budget office spokesman Trent Duffy dismissed the charge, noting Daniels had divested himself of all Lilly holdings. And Republicans said Democrats were beholden to lawyers, who opposed the provision and have given Democrats $45 million since January 2001 versus
$17.5 million to Republicans.

Still, Republican leaders have backed off their late additions to the homeland security bill. "Some provisions went beyond what we needed to do," Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) conceded. "The speaker agreed to work on these issues," said an aide to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). "I don't know that there was really any specific agreement made." That comment seems to undermine moderate Republican senators, who said party leaders promised to modify the
liability protection so it doesn't nullify pending lawsuits.

The liability protection was added as many people have blamed thimerosal for the tripling of autism cases in the last decade. The Food and Drug Administration advanced speculation in 1999 when it said infants who get recommended immunizations receive excessive mercury. It asked vaccine makers to stop using mercury-based thimerosal, which was used to prevent contamination when doctors jabbed a needle into the same vial to vaccinate child after child.

Last year, the Institute of Medicine said evidence was inadequate to find or deny a link between thimerosal and autism, a developmental disability that usually appears within the first three years of life, but "the hypothesis is biologically plausible."

The possible connection opened new avenues for lawsuits over thimerosal. Since 1988, vaccine manufacturers had been protected from liability when Congress started the federal compensation fund to compensate people claiming vaccine-related injuries. But the fund, financed with a vaccine-sales tax, proved slow and difficult. A 1999 government audit found that claims typically took more than two years, and that the government was fighting them with unexpected vigor: 68 percent of the 5,566 resolved claims have been rejected to date, leaving the fund with a $1.8 billion balance.

Thimerosal seemed to provide a way to sue its manufacturers and vaccine makers who used it directly because as an additive, it was not protected by the fund. Mike Hugo, a Boston lawyer working on 1,000 thimerosal cases, said vaccine manufacturers knew of risks in the 1970s but "continued to use thimerosal, even though scientists were telling them other things may be safer."

Industry officials denied the charge.

Republicans also noted that the liability protections were recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the compensation fund's advisory commission to help stabilize the vaccine industry.

Other advocates had sought to make the fund more friendly to victims and had competing legislation. "But," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), whohelped create the vaccine fund, "the administration and the Republican leadership have chosen to ignore those and move only on some industry protections."
Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.

 

PROTECTION MONEY

The Health Sciences Institute e-Alert

December 2, 2002

Dear Reader,

The new Homeland Security Act is designed to protect Americans from terrorist attacks. But you may be comforted to find out that an additional provision was added to the act so that American corporations will also be protected from the parents of autistic children.

Before the age of two, most infants in America receive 18 vaccinations, and on average about 12 of them contain a preservative that's loaded with mercury. The evidence that mercury poisoning from those vaccines sometimes causes autism in otherwise healthy kids is so overwhelming that it's got plenty of people very scared. And no one is more scared than the executives at Eli Lilly, the drug giant that makes thimerosal, the mercury-based vaccine preservative.

The higher-ups at Lilly are addressing this situation aggressively. Are they making sure that not one child will ever again be injected with a vaccine containing mercury? No. But they are going to enormous trouble and expense to protect their company from lawsuits filed against them by parents whose children now suffer severe neurological damage. And this  protection comes courtesy of the U.S. Senate, through the Homeland Security Act, signed into law just a few days ago.

Two articles about this controversy appeared in the New York Times last week. The first made me angry - then the second just made me angrier. Because this transparent "gift" to a well-connected drug company gets more and more unseemly with each new revelation.

-------------------------------------------------------------
A ticking bomb
-------------------------------------------------------------

More than 75 years ago, Eli Lilly & Company developed thimerosal, the vaccine preservative that contains approximately 50% mercury. In recent decades, scientists have shown that mercury is a dangerous neurotoxin. No surprise then that the high levels of mercury detected in many young children in America have been directly linked to permanent neurological damage, including autism. And the one thing all of these children have in common is that they received multiple vaccinations, beginning in the first months of their lives.

Lilly denies this connection, of course. But it obviously scares the heck out of them. Even the FDA has admitted the connection, although this admission is couched in the softest possible language, stating that "concerns" have been raised, and claiming that the agency is working with vaccine manufacturers to "reduce or eliminate thimerosal from vaccines." And even though it sounds as light as air, we know the FDA doesn't make this sort of statement lightly. Especially when a major drug company has so much at stake.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Defusing the bomb
-------------------------------------------------------------

But when you run an international pharmaceutical company, you don't just let the chips fall where they may. Not at all - you get out there and flex some influential muscle.

During the recent political season, Lilly donated $1.6 million dollars to various candidates - more than any other pharmaceutical company. So it hardly seems like a mysterious coincidence that less than two weeks after the mid-term elections someone in the senate sneaked this vaccine provision into the homeland security bill. And "sneaked" is no exaggeration - the provision was introduced at the 11th hour, as were six other provisions that had nothing whatsoever to do with homeland security. But while tucking "pork" into bills that are about to pass is business-as-usual for congress, the unusual thing about this particular pork chop is that no one is taking credit for it.

As The New York Times reported last Friday, nobody seems to know, or will admit to knowing, who placed the provision in the bill, or even who wrote it. It's almost as if someone is ashamed to be associated with this addition that will simply brush aside both class-action and individual thimerosal lawsuits aimed at Eli Lilly. A spokesman for Lilly said that the company knew absolutely nothing about the sweetheart provision.

Right.

I suppose that includes Sidney Taural, the chairman, president and C.E.O. of Eli Lilly, who has a seat on President Bush's Homeland Security Advisory Council.

Right.

-------------------------------------------------------------
"Working" it out
-------------------------------------------------------------

Well none of this has a very good smell, does it? Even the current senate minority leader Trent Lott recognizes the fishy odor. So to force through the passage of the Homeland Security bill, Senator Lott promised that three of the last-minute provisions (including the vaccine protection) would be reviewed when congress reconvenes next year. He said, "We need to work on those three provisions."

Note that he didn't say that the provisions would be removed, reworded, or changed. He only said, "we need to work" on them. And that's a perfect example of some beautifully vague political-speak for you. Meanwhile, the provision currently stands as law, sufficiently complicating all of those existing lawsuits. It will be very interesting to see just how diligently Senator Lott's "work" proceeds on behalf of a handful of citizens against a deep-pockets pharmaceutical giant like Lilly. Don't get me wrong. I am not a proponent of litigation. But this is not a hot cup of coffee at McDonald's we're talking about. And even if it were, the way it was swept off the table is shameful.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Take care of the kids
-------------------------------------------------------------

Last year, under pressure from the Centers for Disease Control, the Public Health Service, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, pharmaceutical companies agreed to stop manufacturing vaccines that contain thimerosal. But while this mercury-based preservative is no longer in production, stores of vaccines that contain it are still being used. This is a very important detail that all parents of young children should know about because they can tell their pediatricians to use only thimerosal-free vaccines on their children.

Whether or not you're a parent of young children, I hope you'll share this critical information with friends and loved ones whose children are young enough to receive vaccinations. Likewise, if you have a child or know of a child who is showing signs of autism, you can get further information and assistance from the Coalition for SAFE MINDs (Sensible Action For Ending Mercury-Induced Neurological Disorders) - a non-profit organization founded by parents to raise awareness about the exposure to mercury from medical products (safeminds.org).

Personally, I am going to take a few minutes to write to Senators Mikulski and Sarbanes and let them know that I don't consider autistic children terrorists from whom we require protection. You know, for when they "work" on those last-minute provisions.


 

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

The Truth About Thimerosal

Democrats and trial lawyers play politics with vaccine liability.

Was it nefarious Dick Armey? Dastardly Senator and Dr. Bill Frist? Or maybe a phantom pediatrician, hired by Eli Lilly to haunt the halls of Congress? From the press coverage, you'd think there's no greater question than who put the now-famous thimerosal rider into the Homeland Security Bill. Washington has been so busy playing political "Where's Waldo?" that no one has actually bothered to explain the merits. We're happy to fill this void with the facts, especially because they show that protecting thimerosal from runaway legal liability is the right thing  to do as a matter of public health. Far from ducking behind Capitol pillars, Republicans should be trumpeting their support.

The story of thimerosal begins in the 1930s, when it was introduced into vaccines to prevent infections from fungi and bacteria. The preservative, an organic mercury compound, was so safe and uncontroversial that nobody even noticed it for 60 years. Then in 1997, as part of the FDA Modernization Act, Congress required the agency to do an inventory of mercury in all of its licensed drugs and vaccines. By 1999, researchers realized that kids were getting more shots these days, and that the thimerosal combined from all the vaccinations could, theoretically, slightly exceed an EPA mercury guideline. The findings were manna to the small but vocal anti- vaccination lobby that has spent years falsely claiming vaccines cause everything from multiple sclerosis to cancer. They soon claimed that thimerosal caused autism.

In retrospect, the researchers we've talked to agree it was the EPA  standard that was the problem. The agency had based its number on a study of pregnant women whose ingestion of significant and sustained amounts of methyl mercury had led to children who later scored slightly lower on neurological and cognitive tests (nothing near autism). The EPA estimated the lowest possible amount a mother could have ingested to be associated with a disorder and then, to be ridiculously safe, divided that by 10. The agency's standard is below that of even the hyper-cautious Food and Drug Administration.

There's little evidence vaccines exceed even that extremely low level. Just last week a University of Rochester study published in Lancet looked at 61 infants--40 receiving vaccines containing thimerosal, and 21 receiving thimerosal-free vaccines. Most children had blood mercury levels of 1 or 2 nanograms per milliliter; the highest level, found in one child, was 4.11 nanograms per milliliter.

By comparison, the EPA standard is 5.9 nanograms per milliliter. The study also found that children excrete ethyl mercury more quickly than expected, so that it doesn't build up from one vaccination to the next. "A mom who eats a tuna fish sandwich probably passes along more mercury during breast-feeding than a kid gets in a vaccination," says Michael Pichichero, the study's lead investigator.

Most important, no scientific study has ever found a link between vaccines and autism, despite years of detailed research into the safety of vaccines. Even the World Health Organization continues to endorse the use of the preservative. Sadly, the real losers of this wild goose chase are parents of autistic children, who've seen anti-vaccinators use their cause to divert time and resources away from legitimate research into the disorder. U.S. public health agencies knew most of this in 1999. But they worried that anti-vaccine groups would use the FDA information to scare parents away from immunizations. So they hastily recommended that manufacturers immediately remove the preservative--a huge mistake.

"We took it out precipitously, which made it look like thimerosal is harmful--when there is no evidence it is. I think we hurt the public trust," said Paul Offit, who sits on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and is chief of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

The recommendation brought unwarranted fear, vaccine shortages, and . .. .. tort lawyers. Usually, parents of the rare child injured by a vaccine must go through the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program before they can sue in regular courts. Set up by Congress in 1986 after lawsuits all but bankrupted vaccine makers, VICP ensures that victims get compensated quickly for genuine wrongs.

But the tort lawyers hate that VICP cuts out their giant fees, and they saw an opening in thimerosal. They've exploited every loophole to keep frivolous thimerosal cases out of VICP, and have instead filed hundreds of lawsuits against vaccine makers and Eli Lilly (which stopped making thimerosal 10 years ago). The four vaccine makers left are today stuck devoting their funds not to research into new, life-saving vaccines, but to paying legal bills.

These, readers, are the facts behind the thimerosal rider that is supposed to be so scandalous. All the legislation does is require that parents first go through VICP, as with any vaccine claim. They can sue later in other courts, if they choose (and assuming a statute of limitations problem is fixed). The vaccine court is much better positioned than other courts to decide on the merits of thimerosal cases. And it has the added social benefit of protecting vaccine research and production at a time when we need both to defend against bioterror.

None of this makes trial lawyers rich, though, and so they asked Senate Democrats, led by Joe Lieberman, to strip the rider away. They lost, but they did such a good media job that new Majority Leader Trent Lott has promised modifications to protect nervous Republicans who clearly haven't bothered to understand the issue.

We suggest they talk to Dr. Frist, who could supply a nerve transplant. If Republicans can't explain to parents that thimerosal is about supplying safe vaccines to their children, they don't deserve the majority.


Copyright © 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

WashPost Recap: New Vaccine Clause Angers Parents of Autistic Amendment Buried in Homeland Security Law Restricts Right to Sue Makers of Drug Preservative

      [By Susan Warner, special to the Washington Post.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27949-2002Dec8.html

Thomas Brinker loves to sing and play with string. He watches ABC News anchor Peter Jennings on television every night and shouts: "Tickle Peter Jennings." He's 8 now, but his attention span is short and his temper flares easily. Thomas has autism, a condition his parents believe was caused by a simple childhood immunization. "We're waiting for his first normal moment," said his mother, Donna Brinker of Glen Mills, Pa. It was Donna Brinker's temper that flared when she learned that Congress had quietly restricted her right to sue Eli Lilly and Co. and other manufacturers of Thimerosal, the mercury-based vaccine preservative she believes caused her son's condition. The change came in two paragraphs tacked onto the massive Homeland Security Act just days before Congress approved the legislation in November.

The Brinkers are among 800 families in more than a dozen states that have filed similar cases seeking compensation for the costs of their children's autism. Under the new law, signed by President Bush Nov. 25, the parents are required to file claims with a special administrative court under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program before they can take their cases to civil court. The changes could sharply reduce parents' chances of prevailing in civil courts, where damage awards normally could be much higher than those in the "vaccine court." The federal program covers claims for medical and education expenses, but damages for pain, suffering and death are limited to $250,000. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say their awards would likely be higher if they could first take their cases to state courts, where civil juries are known to award millions of dollars in medical injury cases. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has filed a request to restrict the use of information gathered in vaccine court proceedings in subsequent civil court cases, another potential obstacle for the plaintiffs.

"I felt betrayed," Brinker said of the new legislation. "I believe in protecting our homeland, but it petrifies me to think that our nation would protect any industry at the expense of our children."     Penny Starr-Ashton, of Drexel Hill, Pa., whose autistic 6-year-old daughter, Maddie, is another plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania in July, said it is particularly painful to have the provision wrapped in the flag. "Who doesn't want a safer country?" she asked. "But who's going to protect me? Who's going to protect my child?"  The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development estimates that between 1 in 500 and 1 in 1,000 children is diagnosed with autism in the United States each year. Initial studies in the 1960s found four to five cases of autism in every 10,000 people, although the institute cautions that some of the increase could be due to changes in reporting and diagnosing the disease.

 A study by the University of California at Davis found that a third of California parents of autistic children diagnosed in the mid-1990s blame vaccines for their children's illnesses. Congress created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in 1986 to address growing concerns about vaccine safety. Claims are filed with the Department of Health and Human Services through the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The program has paid out 1,775 claims totaling $1.4 billion and is funded by a 75-cent surcharge on every child vaccination.

Brinker said parents of children with signs of mercury poisoning can spend up to $20,000 a year out of pocket. Thomas is undergoing chelation therapy to draw metals out of his body and is on a strict diet. His parents take him to a specialist in Louisiana for treatment, and his mother travels to Mexico to get drugs that are not approved in the United States.

Beyond today's expenses, Brinker worries about supporting Thomas in the long term. "The mercury preservative has deprived Thomas of having a normal life," she said. "That our nation would protect such a killer is beyond comprehension."    
Aside from potentially lower awards, Thomas Brinker and Maddie Ashton will have another problem in vaccine court, said their lawyer, Tobi Millrood. Like many children, they were diagnosed with autism more than three years after their vaccinations, beyond the time permitted to file under the program's rules.

Some states, including Oregon, Florida, Louisiana, Illinois and California, had ruled that they had jurisdiction over Thimerosal cases, said John Kim, a Houston lawyer who argued against the government's request to close vaccine court records. "Now I guess this new provision in the Homeland Security Act trumps that," Kim said.

Meanwhile, all Thimerosal cases have been put on hold at vaccine court while the court grapples with the scientific debate over the possible causes of autism. The Office of the Special Master, which oversees procedural issues at vaccine court, expects 3,000 to 5,000 filings.

Parents outraged about the last-minute change point to Eli Lilly, the Indianapolis drug maker, as its biggest beneficiary. Lilly invented Thimerosal and manufactured it until the 1980s. The preservative is 50 percent mercury by weight, and had been used in vaccines since the 1930s. Lilly is a defendant in 200 Thimerosal-related lawsuits.  "It's turned into being about money," Brinker said. "Parents with kids with autism don't have the money to give to congressmen. It turns out whoever has the most money wins."

The provision in the Homeland Security bill was originally written by Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a physician, as part of broader legislation aimed at helping drug companies produce vaccines after post-Sept. 11, 2001, concerns about smallpox and anthrax. The number of U.S. vaccine manufacturers has dropped to four, with companies complaining of low profit margins, manufacturing problems and fear of liability for injury.

Edward G. Sagebiel, a spokesman for Lilly, said his company had no role in pushing the last-minute legislative changes. "We express sympathy for the parents and the children who have suffered adverse reactions," he said. "However, the lawsuits that have been filed against Lilly and other manufacturers are not supported by science."

The House Government Reform Committee has scheduled a hearing on vaccine safety for Tuesday.
In 1999, the Food and Drug Administration conducted a review of Thimerosal and found no evidence of harm beyond limited cases of hypersensitivity to the vaccine. But the same year, the Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Public Health Service recommended that Thimerosal be removed from vaccines, partly out of fear that parents would stop immunizing their children and create a bigger public health problem.

In October 2001, the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, said there was no evidence that Thimerosal caused autism, but it did say the theory was "biologically plausible." Most recently, on Nov. 30, the British medical journal the Lancet published a study showing that infants who received vaccines containing Thimerosal had levels of mercury in their blood that are within federal limits.

Starr-Ashton remains unconvinced. "I don't believe anything that is 50 percent mercury by weight is safe," she said. She noted reports of health damage caused by mercury in fish, thermometers and dental fillings. "I'm not that dumb."

The debate over science has become a furor over the democratic process in the tight-knit community of parents of children with autism that is linked by the Internet and community support groups. "Nobody is owning up to it," Brinker said. "It is so underhanded. I just can't believe our government would do this. We're not going to back down on this issue. We will not be silent."

Starr-Ashton said she is not against vaccines, especially because she taught in a school for the deaf for many years: "I saw first-hand the damage done by rubella." But now she does not know who to trust. "Here I was, a dutiful parent taking my child to do what the government and the Academy of Pediatrics said I should do to protect my child against disease," Starr-Ashton said. "Something went terribly wrong. I need answers."
      © 2002 The Washington Post Company

 

MIKE ARGENTO
Saturday, November 23, 2002

http://ydr.com/story/mike/3940/

Thank God our leaders in Congress were wide awake and working day and night, fingers to the bone, to protect us from the scourge of terrorism by trying to prevent parents of autistic children from suing a drug manufacturer that may have caused their children's autism.

Thank God our leaders in Congress were able to see the threat to our security and safety posed by parents of autistic children.Thank God our leaders in Congress tried to act decisively to keep us safe from parents of autistic children.

Whew.

That was a close one.

We can now feel safe from the threat of parents of autistic children because as we all know - without getting into stereotyping here - parents of autistic children are the real threats to our well being and safety as a nation, and a world, for that matter. Of course, not all parents of autistic children are working to destroy our way of life, and life on this planet in general. No, some parents of autistic children are fine, upstanding Americans, patriotic Americans who are just as concerned as anybody about the threat to our national security posed by other parents of autistic children.

What?

You didn't know of the terrible, terrible threat parents of autistic children pose to our national security?

That's why you're sitting there in your pajamas reading this and not striding through the halls of power in your pajamas right now.

Our members of Congress, in their deep and infinite wisdom, clearly saw the threat of the parents of autistic children and acted accordingly. They made sure that, when they voted to approve the creation of the new Department of Homeland Security, they'd take care of those parents of autistic children.

What they did is slip an amendment into the bill to create the department that would, essentially, forbid parents of autistic children from suing pharmaceutical companies. OK, it was a little more specific than that. According to The Washington Post, the amendment forbids parents from suing the manufacturer of a vaccine that contained a mercury-based preservative that some believe may cause autism.

OK, it was a little more specific than that. The amendment, backed by President Dubya, expanded liability protection for vaccines to ingredients of vaccines, language specifically targeted at helping Eli Lilly and Co.,which is being sued by parents of autistic children for its manufacture and sale of a preservative called Thimerosal.

That's how it works. The law doesn't say, "And the U.S. government gives Eli Lilly a break." But since no other drug companies are being sued for their use of vaccine ingredients, it's apparent that it is intended to help Eli Lilly. You're probably thinking, what does that have to do with protecting the nation from insane people who believe their path to heaven is paved with blood and fire?

That just shows what you know.

It's vitally important to national security that parents of autistic children not be allowed to sue a huge pharmaceutical company because . . .because . . . well, just because.

Republican lawmakers made some lame excuse that pharmaceutical companies that make vaccines that could be used in the event of biological attacks shouldn't have to worry about being saddled by lengthy and costly lawsuits just because they manufactured a product that may have caused life-changing health problems for some children.

Not all Republicans think that way. Our own U.S. Rep. Todd Platts, R-York County, voted for the bill but only because his only other choice was to vote against the whole Homeland Security bill. He said he didn't like that the bill granted immunity to pharmaceutical companies or that it permitted the government to contract with companies that moved their headquarters to Bermuda to avoid paying taxes or that it specified locating the Homeland Security Research Center at Texas A&M. He said he believes Congress will go back in January and take that stuff out.

At least that's the promise the leadership has given.

But given their record for honesty, can you believe them?

Let's look at the Texas A&M thing. The bill never mentioned Texas A&M. It just listed 15 criteria for the research center that, put together, meant Texas A&M was the only place in the nation suitable for such an august endeavor. It's not clear whether one requirement was for the school to be nicknamed "Aggies." With Eli Lilly, the congressional and presidential intent seemed to be that Eli Lilly would be so tied up with litigation that it couldn't possibly have the time and energy to make vaccines to protect against attacks that haven't occurred and may never occur.

Poor Eli Lilly.

Good thing it got this break so we can all feel safer.

And it's also a good thing that, between 1997 and 2000, Eli Lilly made $18.4 million in campaign contributions, mostly to Republicans. By giving that money to our lawmakers, Lilly was able to ensure our safety and security by getting Congress to exempt it from lawsuits from parents of autistic children.

You know, they said everything had changed after Sept. 11, 2001. Well, at least one thing hasn't changed.
We still have the best government money can buy. Mike Argento, whose column appears Mondays and Thursdays in the Living section and Saturdays on the editorial page, can be reached at mike@ydr.com.
 

HURT IN THE NAME OF SECURITY
        
    By Marita Lowman    12/13/2002 
      
When Tara McHale gave birth to her first child, Samantha, she recorded every wonderful moment of her baby's life. The first smile, the first word, the first step, the first hug, the jutting of each tooth, the nuance of each new gesture. In every way, Samantha was developmentally on target. At 15 months, she walked and talked and joyfully played.

Then, during a regular medical checkup, the pediatrician injected four  childhood vaccines into Samantha's bloodstream. Samantha, of Clarks Summit, has never been the same. The next morning, her cognitive skills were dulled. Her physical abilities spun backward.

When she was 4, she could not be toilet trained. She no longer made eye contact. Her speech shrunk to one- or two-word sentences. She flapped her hands in bizarre gestures.All the while, her mother pursued pediatricians, neurologists, audiologists and other professionals to find out what was wrong. In 1997, a developmental pediatrician confirmed the diagnosis. Autism is a neurological condition that forever alters a child's life.

"It was a crushing blow," Mrs. McHale said.

It is a blow most members of Congress know nothing about. So when the federal legislators approved the Homeland Security Act last month, they glossed over a last-minute provision tucked secretly into the bill. It granted Eli Lilly and other pharmaceutical companies retroactive protection from lawsuits such as those that say Lilly's vaccines caused or contributed to autism.

Childhood vaccines have been suspect for many years, but the claims gained more credence when research found dangerously high levels of mercury and the preservative thimerosal in the vaccines. One thousand lawsuits were pending against the vaccine makers, but the last-minute addition to the Homeland Security Bill canceled all of them.

Mrs. McHale, Rita Cheskiewicz, of Dallas, and Frank Scholz, of Mehoopany --all parents of autistic children -- met Thursday with U.S. Rep. Don Sherwood, R-Tunkhannock, to seek his support in overturning the provision.

They are hurt by the government's seemingly cavalier attitude toward children with autism. They are frustrated by what appear to be cozy relationships between pharmaceutical manufacturers and the White House. Mrs. Cheskiewicz, a former administrator at Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia, gave up her job when her son A.J. was diagnosed with autism. He was normal in every way until age 18 months, when he received three vaccines at once. He stopped speaking and stopped responding to his name. "As a mother, it is heartbreaking, and it did not have to happen," Mrs. Cheskiewicz said.

Mr. Scholz, whose son, Joey, was diagnosed as autistic several years ago, drives two hours a day to take his son to an educational program geared to children with autism. The children will need lifelong care. The parents want more government resources put into autism research. They want more recognition of autism's devastating effects.

Mr. Sherwood, visibly moved by the families' plight, said he will try through the Health and Human Services Committee to direct funding for autism through national health institutions. He also will recommend overturning the Homeland Security provision, but the prospect of success is not good."There will be some support, and I'll give it a shot when we go back into session in January, but to turn the provision around now will be a major proposition," he said.

Samantha McHale is 10 now, and despite intensive care, she is wrapped in the limitations of autism. She needs help dressing, bathing, toileting. She doesn't understand gender or relationships, time or numbers. She does not recognize family names, and when she's in pain, she cannot explain why or where she hurts. She does not go to ballet classes or listen to music with friends or take part in other activities most 10-year-old girls enjoy. 

 

Increase in Autism Troubling: Houston Chronicle Front Page Some parents link illness to vaccines, but doctors unsure

      [By Todd Ackerman and Mary Ann Fergus. Copyright 2002 Houston
Chronicle.]
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/health/1654344

  Beaumont residents Mark and Darla Williford can tell you exactly when their infant daughter stopped making eye contact, learning new words and smiling for the camera. It was shortly after her first birthday, on the day in November 1995 that Laura received four vaccines. That night, she had a fever and was agitated, common side-effects of vaccination. But the next six months were anything but typical: the girl acted strangely, flipping lights on and off, for example, and she would scream and laugh for no reason. "It looked like she was going insane," said her dad. In March 1999, Laura was diagnosed with autism, a devastating neurological disorder marked by jerky, repetitive movements, a lack of language skills and social withdrawal. A month after the diagnosis, Mark Williford found a report about a possible link between autism and childhood vaccines that contained a mercury-based preservative. His daughter's vaccines contained the preservative, called thimerosal; her symptoms matched those of mercury poisoning.

      "I remember reading the symptoms and a cold chill went up my spine,"Williford recalled. "I said, `This is what's causing it.' "  In Texas and around the world, more and more people are becoming convinced that autism can be caused by the vaccines supposed to protect them. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say there's no evidence to support the hypothesis, but thousands of parents have joined a worldwide legal campaign to hold pharmaceutical companies liable for injecting infants with a known toxin.

      It might sound like ambulance-chasing lawyers and blame-happy parents except for one thing: Autism's exploding these days and no one knows why. The explosion, a tripling over the last decade, suggests an environmental component that could be explained by increased mercury exposure associated with a rapid increase in vaccinations during the 1990s. The mercury has now been removed from most vaccines, but concern over a possible link to autism has led to congressional hearings, multimillion-dollar studies, and clusters of class-action lawsuits that one of the lawyers says "could be the biggest thing to come down the litigation pipeline ever."

      There also have been declining immunization rates in some countries, raising fears among public health leaders that the allegations could undermine a vaccine program considered one of the great medical breakthroughs of the past century. Some scientists acknowledge that this fear threatens to stifle open inquiry into whether the concerns are legitimate.

      For the most part, however, doctors seem confident that the allegations aren't legitimate.  "Vaccines have been tested every which way and no link to autism has ever come up," said Dr. Jane Siegel, a pediatrics professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who has served on national advisory committees on vaccines. "They're safe."  Still, scientists are at a loss to explain the dramatic increase in the incidence of autism, which was not described until the 1940s and then was attributed to cold "refrigerator" mothers. That theory has been debunked and researchers are zeroing in on genetic causes, but the disorder is still poorly understood. There is no cure, though a new intensive therapeutic program is helping some children.

      Once thought to occur in 1 of every 10,000 children, autism today is estimated to afflict 1 in 500. A California study last month that found a three-fold increase from 1987 to 1998 said the hike couldn't be explained away by statistical anomalies or different definitions or growing public awareness, but the study could offer no explanation. The increase in Texas was more than twice as large as in California.

      There are two ways vaccines are alleged to play a role. One is that certain vaccines -- the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot has attracted the most attention -- may themselves cause autism or other problems in a small percentage of sensitive people. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine, published Thursday, found no evidence to support the MMR theory, the latest in a series of such findings involving that vaccine.

The other theory involves thimerosal, which until recently was used in many vaccines to guard against contamination when pediatricians jab the same vial repeatedly to vaccinate one child after another. The amount of mercury in each shot was slight, but advocates of this theory say a dangerous amount  could accumulate because the number of required vaccinations has mushroomed since the late 1980s as researchers have figured out how to prevent more infectious diseases -- a typical child now gets 32 doses of 12 vaccines by the age of 6; a 2-month-old may get five shots during one visit to the doctor's office.

Critics wonder if all that mercury was more than those little bodies could handle, whether the result is autism or some other crippling neurological disorder. "It's outrageous to think that injecting a child with all that toxicity is an acceptable risk," said Bernard Rimland, director of the Autism Research Institute in San Diego. "It's also outrageous that despite such compelling evidence of harm, the medical community would subject children to it."

In 1999, the FDA concluded that infant children who receive the recommended series of immunizations are receiving more mercury than is considered safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and asked vaccine manufacturers to voluntarily phase out their use of thimerosal. The conclusion was later echoed by the CDC, pediatric organizations and a blue-ribbon panel of experts that reviewed all the existing studies on thimerosal and autism.  The manufacturers now say they're producing thimerosal-free vaccines, and a Texas Department of Health representative said the agency is confident of this. Believers in the mercury theory, however, are skeptical about whether all the old stuff is off the shelves.

For instance, it took an intense effort by Williford to get the Beaumont Health Department to replace its supply last year. The department finally agreed in August 2001, following six months of Williford's making requests, talking to his state representatives and appearing at City Council meetings.

For his and other families, the struggle was to understand what was happening. After her son was diagnosed with mild pervasive developmental disorder at age 2 1/2, autism a couple of years later, and then "severe autism," Spring resident Gina Shaw traveled to California in 2000 for a Defeat Autism Now conference.  There, she heard a speaker present new information suggesting a link between thimerosal and autism. Coming on the heels of a test that had revealed high levels of metals in her son's blood, the theory seemed persuasive.

Tears began running down Shaw's cheeks as she listened to the speaker. She grew angry that government agencies allowed the use of vaccines containing thimerosal. "I was mad as hell," she said, "because they did this to my baby. "Shaw and her husband, Darwin, can barely look at early photographs of Brett. They show a laughing child with twinkling blue eyes. But in photos taken after his second birthday, Brett is stonefaced. He could barely sit still long enough to be photographed.  Now 10, Brett mumbles a few random words such as "bye" and "eat." He can follow simple instructions but doesn't understand everyday conversations between his parents and his 12-year-old sister, Brianna. He takes special-education classes and functions at a 2-year-old's level. Unable even to write his name, Brett lives largely in a world of his own, entertaining himself with simple computer games or playing alone in a closet or tent.

      The Shaws estimate that they've spent $50,000 on their child's care. (The Willifords have spent $60,000.) In January, the Shaws filed a complaint with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which compensates people injured by routine vaccinations. The complaint was handled by Hitt, Patterson & Sell in Houston, one of four Texas firms leading the litigation onslaught.
      Two other firms are also based in Houston -- Gallagher, Lewis, Downey & Kim and Williams & Bailey -- and one is a Dallas firm, Waters & Kraus.  The firms are part of two legal coalitions that estimate they have about 4,000 clients between them. The first lawsuit in a state civil court, filed by Waters & Kraus, concerns a Plano boy who had a growing vocabulary at 20 months, then lost all his language skills, was diagnosed with autism and found to have high levels of mercury exposure. The lawsuit is in Brazoria County, where one of the defendants, Dow Chemical Co., has a drug manufacturing plant.

      Attorney Jeff Sell believes in the cases as a litigator and father. His 8-year-old twins have autism.  Sell cannot file a complaint through the Vaccine Court because those must be filed within three years of the onset of symptoms, and it was five years before he made a connection. But because the Vaccine Court strictly limits damages, the potential for bigger money is in civil courts anyway.  "With as many as 200,000 possible cases of developmental disorders that could be tied to vaccines, this could turn out to be one of the biggest mass tort cases ever in the United States," said Michael Williams, chairman of the Mercury Vaccine Alliance, which already has filed seven class-action lawsuits around the country. "But we won't know for two or three years."  Complicating the plaintiffs' case is that the children could have been exposed to mercury from other sources, such as fish or dental fillings. Even if science ultimately finds a link between mercury and autism, it might not be clear whether the culprit was the vaccines or exposure from the mother's fillings or consumption of fish while the child was in the womb. At the moment, of course, the biggest threat to the lawsuits' success is the lack of science backing them, say legal observers. Scientists acknowledge that mercury is a potent neurotoxin known to damage the brains, nervous systems and immune systems of unborn children, but beyond that little is certain.

      For one thing, although autism sometimes can be detectable as early as 6 months, it more often appears to hit later, at 1 1/2 to 2 years, and after the child had appeared to be developed normally. Those skeptical of a vaccine link say it is just a coincidence that symptoms appear at the
same time the MMR vaccine is given.

For another, there have been few well-designed studies looking into the mercury allegation. The blue-ribbon panel of experts assembled to look into the matter called the idea that thimerosal poses a significant threat to the developing brain "biologically plausible" but said none of the existing studies had been designed well enough to produce evidence of a link.

Both sides in the debates have seized on the panel's report.  (The evidence is much better that the MMR vaccine doesn't cause autism, said the head of the panel. The New England Journal of Medicine study published Thursday tracked 500,000 Danish children born between 1991 and 1998 and found no statistical difference in autism between those who received the MMR vaccine and those who didn't. The vaccine has never contained thimerosal.) Typical of the contentiousness surrounding the issue was a July 2000 congressional hearing convened by U.S. Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., whose autistic grandson seemed healthy and talkative until getting a series of vaccinations at one time. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., complained that the hearing was unfairly stacked with parents and experts alleging a connection between vaccination and autism, and the only thing committee members could agree on was the need for further study of the issue.  "The fact is, there just hasn't been much done in this area," said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, a professor of maternal and child health at the University of California-Davis School of Medicine, recently awarded a federally funded center to study the issue. "We don't know much about the epidemiology of autism, let alone whether mercury could foster it."   This much is known about autism: There's a genetic susceptibility -- the risk increases for younger siblings of autistic children -- that scientists think involves 10 to 20 genes. But the environment also can play a role: It was more common in babies born to mothers who took thalidomide or had rubella during pregnancy. New studies will look at the interaction between genes and environment.

The Man Behind The Vaccine Mystery

      [CBS Evening News.]
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/12/12/eveningnews/main532886.shtml

      It's been a mystery in Washington for weeks. Just before President Bush signed the homeland security bill into law an unknown member of Congress inserted a provision into the legislation that blocks lawsuits against the maker of a controversial vaccine preservative called "thimerosal," used in vaccines that are given to children. Drug giant Eli Lilly and Company makes thimerosal. It's the mercury in the preservative that many parents say causes autism in thousands of children – like Mary Kate Kilpatrick. Asked if she thinks her daughter is a victim of thimerosal, Mary Kate's mother, Kathy Kilpatrick, says, "I think autism is mercury poisoning."
      But nobody in Congress would admit to adding the provision, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Acosta – until now. House Majority Leader Dick Armey tells CBS News he did it to keep vaccine-makers from going out of business under the weight of mounting lawsuits. "I did it and I'm proud of it," says Armey, R-Texas. "It's a matter of national security," Armey says. "We need their vaccines if the country is attacked with germ weapons." Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., isn't buying it. The grandfather of an autistic child, Burton says Armey slipped the provision in at the last minute, too late for debate.  "And I said, 'Who told you to put it in?'" He said, 'No, they asked me to do it at the White House.'"

 Critics say the Bush family and the administration have too many ties to Eli Lilly. There's President Bush's father, who sat on the company's board in the 1970's; White House budget director Mitch Daniels, once an Eli Lilly executive; and Eli Lilly CEO Sidney Taurel, who serves on the president's homeland security advisory council. Officials at the drug giant insist they did nothing wrong. "No one, not our CEO, not myself, not anyone who works with me asked the White House to insert this legislation," said Eli Lilly spokeswoman Debra Steelman. But Kathy Kilpatrick and her husband Michael argue that the thimerosal provision is not designed to protect the nation, but rather to protect Eli Lilly.

      Asked what he'd say to a congressman who came forward and admitted he was responsible for inserting the provision, Michael Kilpatrick says, "I would ask him if he knew he was protecting mercury being shot into our kids." Kathy Kilpatrick asks, "Why would anyone want to save Eli Lilly on our children's backs?"

      Because Armey is retiring at the end of the year, some say the outgoing majority leader is the perfect fall guy to take the heat and shield the White House from embarrassment.  It's a claim both the White house and Armey deny.
 

Friends,

I don't care HOW many tax dollars it takes! Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly  deserves our protection! Eli Lilly has worked hard for decades researching and creating new vaccines to protect public health. It's irrelevant that vaccines have never been shown to do anything but leave death and injury in their wake. It's not Eli Lilly's fault if science can't demonstrate what vaccines must in fact do: protect our health. In exchange for Eli Lilly's efforts to protect us, we should be willing to protect them!

And protecting Eli Lilly is JUST what the awesome "Homeland Security Bill" (recently passed by congress) does! If the president signs the bill into law, taxpayers--not hardworking Eli Lilly--will pay for vaccine-related injuries. Of course, Eli Lilly will still have to pay for damages in the lawsuits they lose out of the 45 already in progress against them. But once those suits are done with, Eli Lilly should not have to spend its research dollars on court costs. The species' health is at stake!

After all, use your noggin. Vaccines SHOULD work. It's just a matter of time until somebody comes up with a study that shows they do. PROTECT ELI LILLY WITH YOUR TAX DOLLARS! That should be the bumper sticker on every car in America. Heck . . . in the world!

And believe me, I'll be the first in line to get the smallpox vaccine. I've already got my shortsleeve shirt on. Because I want to show my neighbors what it means to be a good American. And what it means to be a good American is sacrifice.

I want to be part of the first study that shows that vaccines work. And if I get smallpox or die from the vaccine, at least I know I will have contributed to the public health and to the public good, just like our forebears did when they fought the British. If I die in the war on disease, at last I know I  will have helped Eli Lilly to survive and to keep working heroically toward their one and only goal of perfect public health.

God bless Eli Lilly, and God bless America!

Jock Doubleday
Director
Natural Woman, Natural Man, Inc.
A California Nonprofit Corporation
http://www.gentlebirth.org/nwnm.org
jockdoubleday@aol.com

 

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/local/coursey/courseycolempireb.html

Homeland bill close to home for this family

December 9, 2002

By CHRIS COURSEY
FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Ask Lynn Hartman about the homeland security bill, and her face curls in disgust. It's not that she has anything against fighting terrorists; after all, her husband, Dave, is a pilot for United Airlines. But the new legislation hits close to home for the Hartmans in another, even more personal way. Their 21/2 -year-old son, Taylor, is autistic. Connecting autism and domestic security is a stretch, but Congress managed to do it last month. Last-minute add-ons to the homeland security bill grant Eli Lilly & Co. immunity from lawsuits related to its product thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in many vaccines.

The Hartmans believe it is responsible for Taylor's autism.

"He's been mercury-poisoned," Lynn Hartman says.

The Hartmans are not alone. In a speech before Congress on Nov. 22, Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., said he had "heard from thousands of families across the country that this same thing happened to their child." He cited a growing body of evidence that suggests a huge spike in the number of autistic children may be linked to a program of infant vaccinations that began in the early 1990s.

Like most babies since then, Taylor was vaccinated very early in life -- much earlier than you and I. He had had several doses of thimerosal before he was 6 months old. Large, active and healthy at birth, Taylor developed normally. He was walking and beginning to talk by the time he was 14 months old. But then his parents, who live in Sonoma, noticed a sudden, troubling change. "He started having temper tantrums," says Lynn. "He stopped talking. He became adverse to touch."

Autism is a tricky thing to pin down. Symptoms can range from withdrawal and difficulty speaking to violent, self-injurious behavior. It once was classified as a mental illness passed on genetically to children. The past 10 years, though, have included a large increase in the number of cases of "late-onset autism" -- symptoms of the disorder that appear in young children who previously have been "normal."

The cause is the subject of intense debate. While mercury is often pointed to as a likely culprit, it is a naturally occurring element that enters the body in a number of ways. Seafood, dental fillings and various pollutants all contain mercury. Although researchers have called it "biologically plausible," no study has definitively linked thimerosal with autism. But because of the risks posed by mercury, federal health officials in 1999 advised that infants not receive vaccines containing thimerosal until they were 6 months old. Most
vaccines no longer contain it.

But Taylor's vaccines did.

Traditional treatment for autism involves a lot of occupational therapy, special education and drugs. But the Hartmans have followed a protocol suggested by Stephanie Cave, a Louisiana pediatrician who believes high doses of mercury compromise some children's ability to leach metals from their bodies. Taylor, for instance, had extremely high levels of copper, arsenic, mercury and other metals in his tissues.

They began treating him metabolically, using diet and supplements to remove the metals from his body. The regimen, the Hartmans say, has given them their son back. Taylor's blue-gray eyes peek out from under thick, curly bangs. He points out shapes in the painting he's working on and explains them to a visitor: "wee" and "see." "He started talking again about a month and a half ago," Lynn Hartman says. She says his "development age" is about 19 months -- behind, but progressing once again. She says her anger about the homeland security bill is not because she wants to sue, but because it sweeps a problem under the rug. "A lot of these kids can get better, but they need to get help now," she says. "The drug companies need to admit they messed up."

Contact Chris Coursey at 521-5223 or ccoursey@pressdemocrat.com.

 

Subject: Sen. Daschle, Rep. Pelosi Vow to Repeal Homeland Security
Provision

Eli Lilly & Co.

http://www.stockhouse.com/news/news.asp?tick=LLY&newsid=1413704

Sen. Daschle, Rep. Pelosi Vow to Repeal Homeland Security Provision Shielding Drug Makers from Liability
11/21/02

Claims that Congress Can 'Fix' the Problem Are Misleading WASHINGTON, Nov 21, 2002 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Safe Minds and the Mercury Policy Project are hailing a statement by the US House and Senate leadership that they will work to repeal a corporate special-interest provision in the Homeland Security Bill. The provision wipes out all legal remedies for thousands of autistic children harmed by mercury in infant vaccines and must be eliminated, the two groups working to prevent mercury-related injuries said today.

"We strongly support Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and House Democratic Leader-Elect Nancy Pelosi's vow to remove egregious special interest provisions, including the thimerosal liability shield for Eli Lilly," said Michael Bender, Director of the Mercury Policy Project. As passed, the Homeland bill allows the families to re-file their claims in a special administrative court for vaccine-related injury cases where it takes years for cases to be heard and 87% of the claims filed are denied. And claims can only be made by parents if their child's first symptom of neurological damage occurred within the last three years, which effectively bars many families from going to court to hold Lilly accountable for their children's injuries, the groups said. "It is a sad state of affairs when the Congress and the White House conspire to benefit a pharmaceutical giant at the expense of injured children and families whose lives have been shattered by corporate wrongdoing," said Lyn Redwood, RN, president of Safe Minds and the parent of a child who developed multiple disabilities after receiving 125 times the government-recommended exposure to mercury. "Eli Lilly has been allowed to exploit a national threat to America to further their own agenda."

The provision to benefit Lilly -- which was added to the unrelated Homeland Security Bill at the last minute -- affects lawsuits against the drug maker for injuries caused by its product thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that was used in infant vaccines until a few years ago. "Claims by Republican congressional leaders that they will "fix" the provision next year are empty promises because it will be too late," said Michael Bender, Director of the Mercury Policy Project. "Once President Bush signs the bill -- which will happen any day -- Eli Lilly can go to court and have all the mercury vaccine-related lawsuits against it dismissed immediately."

According to Redwood, after conversations with senate staff, the "fix" will do little if anything to right this wrong. "Our children have been silenced once by autism and now the votes of Congress have silenced them again," said Redwood. "The right thing to do would be to pass legislation as soon as possible to strike the thimerosal provisions." The lawsuits were filed by the families of children who developed autism, learning disabilities and other neurological problems after multiple mercury exposures. It takes hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to care for a severely autistic child and millions over the victim's lifetime.

satire -

Rich Procter: 'Pharma-gate! Red alert! Red alert!'
Contributed by drprocter on Friday, November 22 @ 09:55:18 EST
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(intercepted by Rich Procter)

MEMO
From: Karl Rove
To: The Team
PHARMA-GATE! RED ALERT! RED ALERT!

PEOPLE -- We're vulnerable, and we've got to act NOW to head off a debacle. As I'm sure you're well aware, our compatriot Mr. DeLay inserted a rider into the Homeland Security bill that would shield one of our biggest campaign contributors, Eli Lilly from lawsuits by outraged, betrayed  parents who used a vaccine they're producing that very well may be causing autism in their kids. In a slick move we've got to remember, Tom the Bomb actually made this RETROACTIVE, so that parents of autistic kids currently suing Eli Lilly would have their suits thrown out! That guy is slicker than deer guts on a doorknob.

The VULNERABILITY, of course, comes from the fact that it looks like we the Republicans, care more about stuffing the dirty dollars of Big Pharma into our full-to-burstin' pockets than we do about the welfare of children! It looks like we, the Republicans, the party of "responsiblity," are shielding Eli Lilly from taking responsibility for their own actions. It looks like we're rigging the justice system to screw already suffering parents as a payback for the dumptruck full of cash Big Pharma dropped on us! It makes us look like soulless plutocrats -- greedy, money-grubbing whores! Whereas the truth is...ahhhh....

Anyway, we've got to get out in front of this issue like we got out in front of the whole "privatizing Social Security" issue. I'm thinking we try another "carpet-bomb the airwaves" kinda deal, that works something like this:

First, we gin up an astroturf "concerned parents" group -- I'm thinking we call it, ahhhh, "Grateful Parents of Challenged Children For Responsible Pharmaceutical Policy." Next, we hire a bunch of dewy-eyed 30-something mother-types who give out with some copy like the following:

MOTHER-TYPE -- (halting, almost overcome with emotion) "Recently, I heard that some (pause -- can barely say the word) 'Democrats' had the nerve to criticize our President and his compatriots just because they included some beneficial extras onto the Homeland Security Bill. One of those extras will free up pharmaceutical companies from frivolous lawsuits. (steels herself -- stares down camera) "As the mother of a 'challenged child,' I know what heartbreak is. And I know these partisan, obstructionist Democrats have broken the heart of our President by daring to criticize him, even as he shoulders the responsibility of leading this country into a series of righteous wars that will vaporize our enemies and make the world safe for people l ike us -- because there'll be nothing left but people like us. (graphic on screen) I'd like you to join me in calling President Bush and thanking him for making it impossible for me and other concerned parents to stop these pharmaceutical companies from generating the record profits that could possibly lead to the economic recovery the off-shore tax haven where they're based. Please call the number on the screen. Be aware this is not a free call, and you'll be charged $2.75 a minute."

Is that beautiful, or WHAT? 'Course we gotta get Rush and G. Gordo and O'Reilly and Hannity to call the Dems a bunch of whiny, hand-wringing limp-wristed Latte liberal traitors for trying to stop the Homeland Security bill for something so trivial as a bunch of whiny, lawsuit-happy parents being led down the primrose path by money-mad ambulance chasing lawyers.

Oh, and one last thing -- we need to invent some statistics proving...ahhhh....wait a minute, it's coming....that the autism these parents suffered could just as easily have been caused by the mother visiting San Francisco and consuming too many double lattes while listening to Barbra Streisand records while pregnant. Yeah.

 

      Debbie Greco's son was a normal 3-year-old when, after finishing a round of childhood immunizations, he became withdrawn, aggressive, and slow to speak - all symptoms of autism.

    
      THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE

      http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=6428783&BRD=2318&PAG=461&dept_id=484045&rfi=6
      BY ANTONIO C. CABRAL  12/19/2002

      "I didn't know what was causing them," says Greco, a San Antonio native. "Friends have the same problem, but their children's doctor told them there was no need to question the use of vaccines. We didn't know about Thimerosal."    The coziness between the pharmaceutical companies and the Bush administration has harmed families but helped drug manufacturers, including Eli Lilly, producer of Thimerosal. The drug company's cause was recently buttressed after Majority Leader and Texas Republican Dick Armey(who didn't cop to the deed until last week) stealthily tacked on a protective clause to the Department of Homeland Security bill that prohibits families from suing Eli Lilly for faulty vaccinations - including those containing Thimerosal, which could have caused autism in thousands of children.

      "That clause should have gone through this committee and it didn't," said U.S. Representative Dan Burton (R-Indiana), a member of the House's Government Reform Committee. He has an autistic grandchild and is a harsh critic of Thimerosal. Thimerosal prevents bacteria from forming in vaccines; it was used widely in in the 1980s and '90s. The mercury-based chemical also boosted drug companies' profits because they could sell multiple doses in one vial without fear of contamination.


      Although in 1999 the Federal Drug Administration required pharmaceutical companies to remove Thimerosal from their vaccines, it didn't recall batches already sitting in doctors' offices, public health clinics, or hospitals.   As many as 30 vaccines have contained Thimerosal, including the Diptheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis combination; during the 1990s, health officials required children to receive additional Thimerosal-containing vaccines, including Hepatitis B.

      The FDA knew the risks of Thimerosal years before it forced drug companies to quit using it in vaccines. In the 1980s, the FDA required companies to remove the chemical from all over-the-counter products, but not vaccines. By 1999, the FDA announced that infants who receive several thimerosal-containing vaccines might be overexposed to mercury, which prompted a ban on Thimerosal - but not a recall.

      Some parents of once-healthy children, such as Debbie Greco, believe that the chemical has caused autism in their kids. Other parents don't know about the possible connection between Thimerosal and autism because there is an average of a 44-month gap between the initial vaccinations and the onset of symptoms. Autism was once a rare disorder. In 1970, about one in 2,000 children suffered from it; over the next 30 years - during the time children were being exposed to more mercury-containing vaccines - that number has increased to one in 150, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

      A neurological disorder, autism causes developmental delays, abnormal language and thinking skills, and other erratic behavior. Expensive therapy and medicine - out of financial reach for most working families - can lessen the symptoms and allow autistic children to learn basic skills, but do not cure the disease.   The Grecos spend about $25,000 a year in additional medical and therapy expenses for her son. "My son's illness impacts our whole family for life," Greco says. "It's not something that is going away."

      The federal government initially covered up the serious risk of Thimerosal-based vaccines. But a non-profit advocacy group, SAFEMINDS (Sensible Action for Ending Mercury-Induced Neurological Disorders), filed a Freedom of Information Act to obtain a confidential Thimerosal study conducted by the CDC. That study showed that children exposed to mercury from vaccines were more than twice as likely to develop autism than kids who were unexposed.

      In July 2001, the CDC released a revised version of the study that downplayed the role Thimerosal had in causing autism - stating the data was inconclusive.

      Many scientists, such as Dr. Boyd Haley, chairman of the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky, believe Thimerosal is toxic for children. With smaller kidneys and livers, children can't process the mercury in their bodies as adults can. "Giving a 10-pound infant a single vaccine in a day is the equivalent of giving a 100-pound adult 40 vaccines in a day. We're talking about causing death; we're talking about causing autism."

      U.S. Representative Burton has also taken the Bush administration to task for protecting drug manufacturers from litigation. He held hearings on the damage caused by vaccines containing Thimerosal and said there was "clear evidence on the relationship between the vaccines and autism." He has demanded that all vaccines containing Thimerosal be destroyed. "Every day that mercury-containing vaccines remain on the market is another day of putting 8,000 children at risk."

      Dallas-based law firm Walter & Kraus is representing several parents in lawsuits against Eli Lilly and other pharmaceutical companies. Attorney Andy Waters accused Lilly of hiding the truth about Thimerosal and using its own biased study to promote it. "Lilly used an unethical study to help them sell their product."

      Drug companies such as Lilly are also using their political muscle to protect their financial interests. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in the 2001-2002 election cycle, Lilly contributed more than $6 million to various Republican committees.  Lilly has other connections to the White House: George Bush the First served on its board in the 1970s; Dubya hired Mitch Daniels, director of Office and Management and Budget, from Lilly, where Daniels worked as president of the company's North American operations.

      Unlike the drug companies, the parents, families, and autistic children have no one to represent their concerns on Capitol Hill. "The problem is we have no lobbyists," Greco explains.   Without the political or financial power, Greco and thousands of families like hers have little recourse to hold drug companies accountable, especially when the pharmaceutical industry has so many friends in government to protect them.

    

CounterPunch

December 18, 2002

Hi! We're Republicorp! (formerly USA)
(this noticed received in the mail by Rich Procter)

http://www.counterpunch.org/procter1218.html

Hi! We're Republicorp!TM You may have known us as what used to be your country, "The United States of America" when you were just a "citizen." Now you're a Preferred CustomerTM (proof of Republican registration required), and you're gonna LOVE the changes we've made!

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3) FREEDOM FROM TERRORISTS! -- Thanks to RepubliCorpsTM patented "Information Awareness Office"TM, we'll know EVERYTHING EVERYBODY EVERYWHERE does ALL THE TIME!*** Lucky for you, RepubliCorpsTM has chosen convicted felon John Poindexter to run this program (hey, it's takes a criminal to CATCH a criminal, doncha know!) Of course, you don't have to worry about a thing -- the whole point is to catch the BAD people -- non-white, non-Christian, non-gun owning non-Republicans. And the sooner we get rid of them, the better! Coming soon -- our "INSTA-JUSTICE"TM and "QUIK-DEATH"TM Programs!

***Excludes Gun Purchases (Good work, John Ashcroft! A RepubliCorp Plantinum Card Holder!)

4) FREEDOM FROM PROSECUTION! Let's say you're a major pharmaceuticals company, like, oh, say, Eli Lilly. Let's say you produce a product that might just have caused thousands, even tens of thousands of families a lifetime of pain and despair by causing autism in their children. Are you on the hook? No way, now that RepubliCorpTM is here! One of our friendly RepubliCorpTM Service Representatives will be happy to cash your seven figure corporate check, and pass a special "legislative waiver" that will give you a 100% (retroactive!) lifetime pass from having to be harassed by ambulance-chasing lawyers!

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  * Your "Socialist Security" money will now be "invested" by highly skilled Wall Street brokers until every penny is gone!

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  * Your need to be a part of nature will be handled by CEO Bush's forward-looking "Forests Into Deserts"TM plan. After all, you'll be in the Bahamas in your tax shelter -- what do you care???

Be watching for our exciting "You Get More in 2004"TM RepubliCorpTM "Mandate Rebate." Since we're no longer just a "country," we don't really need messy, inefficient "voting," do we? Instead of voting, you'll receive $10 "insta-cash" to donate to the RepubliCorpTM Personal Representative who has done the most for you!

REPUBLICORPTM -- "If It's Not Nailed Down, It's Ours -- And If We Can Pry It Up, It's Not Nailed Down"TM

RICH PROCTER can be reached at planetniner@yahoo.com
 

A Loss For Parents Of Autistic Kids
Suits vs. drug makers blocked
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/ny-usthim243016566nov24,0,5764967.st
ory?coll=ny%2Dnationworld%2Dheadlines
By Thomas Frank
WASHINGTON BUREAU

November 24, 2002


Washington - Kathy Kilpatrick knows her 6-year-old daughter, Mary Kate, will never experience a normal life, because autism makes her almost unable to express feelings and needs. The privation has long saddened Kilpatrick. But last week the Jericho woman grew irate when Republicans in Congress denied her one more thing - the chance to hold someone immediately accountable.

Republicans put a last-minute provision in the homeland-security bill that blocks efforts by Kilpatrick and thousands of parents of autistic children to sue manufacturers of a children's-vaccine additive that may cause autism.

The provision diverts a potential tidal wave of claims - none of them proven - that experts say could rival lawsuits filed over asbestos. Republicans say lawsuits might ruin companies whose capacity to produce
vaccines is essential to fight the heightened threat of a biochemical terrorist attack.

But experts and critics call the provision a back-door gift to politically influential drug companies, particularly Eli Lilly and Co., whose chairman, Sidney Taurel, is on the White House Advisory Council on Homeland Security. The provision would extend the liability protection now given for vaccines to vaccine additives.

One additive faces serious medical questions and legal claims: thimerosal, invented by Lilly and used until recently in many common children's vaccines. An estimated 150 individual autism lawsuits and thousands more under preparation target Lilly.

But now families like the Kilpatricks must file claims with a federal compensation fund that pays medical costs and up to $250,000 more for pain and suffering, but makes no finding of fault. Plaintiffs can reject
settlement offers and sue in court, but face tougher legal standards for winning punitive damages.

It's the corporate protection - not the cash limit - that enrages Kilpatrick.

"They need to be held accountable. The thought that my daughter could be living a normal life - she could be on a soccer team, she could be going to birthday parties, she could fall in love some day - none of those things are going to happen. Ever," she said.

Experts were stunned at how the liability provision was rammed through Congress with little deliberation, circumventing the usual committee process.

Lawrence Gostin, director of the Center for Law and the Public's Health at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins universities, agreed the liability protection should help assure vaccine supplies. But, he added, "We could have also done it by just giving a trillion dollars to the vaccine industry."

"Liability is there for important and complex reasons," Gostin said, citing negligence prevention and victim compensation.

The real problem with the U.S. vaccine supply is not that lawsuits threaten manufacturers, Gostin said, but that there is no national strategy to ensure that important vaccines are produced.

"If the sole concern was the national interest, there would have been a full and open debate about the best way to ensure stable investment and procurement of vaccines," Gostin said. But that wasn't done when Republicans took the one-page liability provision out of a stalled bill on vaccines and added it to the 484-page homeland-security bill charging toward approval. "It's one small item plucked out in the most crude possible way," Gostin said.

Democrats called it payback to the pharmaceutical industry, which has given Republicans $14 million since January 2001, and $5.2 million to Democrats, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. They also questioned the influence of Mitch Daniels, Eli Lilly's former director of North American operations who is director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Management and budget office spokesman Trent Duffy dismissed the charge, noting Daniels had divested himself of all Lilly holdings. And Republicans said Democrats were beholden to lawyers, who opposed the provision and have given Democrats $45 million since January 2001 versus $17.5 million to Republicans.

Still, Republican leaders have backed off their late additions to the homeland security bill. "Some provisions went beyond what we needed to do," Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) conceded.

"The speaker agreed to work on these issues," said an aide to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). "I don't know that there was really any specific agreement made." That comment seems to undermine moderate Republican senators, who said party leaders promised to modify the liability protection so it doesn't nullify pending lawsuits.

The liability protection was added as many people have blamed thimerosal for the tripling of autism cases in the last decade. The Food and Drug Administration advanced speculation in 1999 when it said infants who get recommended immunizations receive excessive mercury. It asked vaccine makers to stop using mercury-based thimerosal, which was used to prevent contamination when doctors jabbed a needle into the same vial to vaccinate child after child.

Last year, the Institute of Medicine said evidence was inadequate to find or deny a link between thimerosal and autism, a developmental disability that usually appears within the first three years of life, but "the hypothesis is biologically plausible." The possible connection opened new avenues for lawsuits over thimerosal. Since 1988, vaccine manufacturers had been protected from liability when Congress started the federal compensation fund to compensate people claiming vaccine-related injuries.

But the fund, financed with a vaccine-sales tax, proved slow and difficult. A 1999 government audit found that claims typically took more than two years, and that the government was fighting them with unexpected  vigor: 68 percent of the 5,566 resolved claims have been rejected to date, leaving the fund with a $1.8 billion balance.

Thimerosal seemed to provide a way to sue its manufacturers and vaccine makers who used it directly because as an additive, it was not protected by the fund.

Mike Hugo, a Boston lawyer working on 1,000 thimerosal cases, said vaccine manufacturers knew of risks in the 1970s but "continued to use thimerosal, even though scientists were telling them other things may be safer." Industry officials denied the charge.

Republicans also noted that the liability protections were recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the compensation fund's advisory commission to help stabilize the vaccine industry.

Other advocates had sought to make the fund more friendly to victims and had competing legislation. "But," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who helped create the vaccine fund, "the administration and the Republican leadership have chosen to ignore those and move only on some industry protections

 

Whose Hands Are Dirty?

Life during Wartime

Security any CEO would love

By A.C. Thompson http://www.sfbayguardian.com/37/09/x_news_war.html


The Homeland Security Act signed by President George W. Bush Nov. 25 is certain to make corporate America feel secure, cheery even, in this season of economic gloom. The law, which will establish a new, 177,000-employee Homeland Security Department, is loaded with perks for big business  and peril for personal liberty.

Perhaps most significantly, the law exempts businesses from being sued under certain circumstances. Section 803, headlined "Litigation Management," will relieve companies manufacturing counterterrorism technology from liability should their products cause injury or death. 

Before the bill had even reached Dubya's desk, Public Citizen, a Ralph Nader-founded government watchdog group, was hollering. "These are the special deals that industry gets out of the people they give large campaign contributions to," Public Citizen president Joan Claybrook tells us. The no-liability provisions, she adds, are a stealth move by conservatives to push tort-law reform, a concept long embraced by CEOs and loathed by trial lawyers and consumer advocates. "Big corporations hate liability," she says.

Drug companies get an even better break: for injuries or illnesses caused as side effects of vaccines, the liability exemption is retroactive. It's a legislative handout. Consider the context: vaccine companies are under fire for including high doses of mercury in their products during the 1990s, a practice that has spurred parents in at least 35 states to sue a host of major pharmaceutical companies, among them Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, and Eli Lilly. The now-doomed suits are a bid to force the companies to scrutinize a possible link between mercury-laden vaccines and autism.

Another possible big business boon comes in a section covering "critical infrastructure"  that is, power generation and the electrical power grid, telecommunication systems, oil refining, water and sewage systems, food production, and so on. The law encourages companies in these fields to communicate with the Homeland Security Department regarding their vulnerabilities to terrorism. The information will be kept secret and
exempted from the federal Freedom of Information Act.

For corporations with a habit of spewing toxic chemicals into the air or dumping heavy metals into rivers, the new law could be a way to avoid public scrutiny  and legal hassles. If a company admits to improperly storing hazardous materials or failing to maintain its facilities, that information, by decree of the Homeland Security Act, can't be used by federal or state prosecutors.

"There's very widespread concern that homeland security measures are being used to protect polluters and withhold information that doesn't need to be withheld," says Bradley Angel, executive director of Greenaction, a San Francisco-based environmental justice group that relies heavily on government documents.

At the Environmental Protection Agency, officials aren't entirely sure how the new rules will affect their operations. "It's difficult to read the tea leaves at this point," says Daniel Meer, an EPA emergency management expert. "I'm sure there are going to be all kinds of working groups and meetings."

While the law shields corporations from citizens' prying eyes, it subjects the public to increased electronic snooping by the feds. Under the rubric "Cyber Security Enhancement," federal agents will be able to monitor the e-mail of suspected hackers, without a court order. The law shreds privacy-protecting rules, allowing Internet service providers to turn over their customers' e-mails to the feds without a warrant.

"There's really no justification for this," argues Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a cyber-liberties group. "I think it's likely there'll be use of this power for illegitimate reasons."

Of course, if the Defense Department gets its way, the privacy-infringing aspects of the Homeland Security Act will seem almost quaint. The Pentagon, as you've probably read, is trying to build the Death Star of surveillance, the Total Information Awareness system, a massive "data-mine" of e-mail messages, phone call records, financial documents, and other personal information.

Tien warns, "This would mean tremendous power to do surveillance. The threats to civil liberties are enormous."

 

Mercury Falling
Homeland Security Act inoculates drug makers against autism lawsuits.
BY CHRIS LYDGATE
243-2122
  http://www.wweek.com/flatfiles/News3373.lasso

_____ When President George W. Bush signed the Homeland Security Act in the White House on Monday, he praised the bill as a "heroic action" that demonstrated "the resolve of this great nation to defend our freedom, our security and our way of life." Three thousand miles away, Portland lawyer Mike Williams rolled his eyes.

Williams represents hundreds of families who are suing pharmaceutical companies--in particular, Eli Lilly--over a mercury-based preservative used in some childhood vaccines. The families contend that the preservative
triggered neurological damage in their children, who have been diagnosed with autism.

Last week, Williams was stunned to learn that an unknown lawmaker had slipped a last-minute rider into the Homeland Security Act, shutting down the lawsuits in the name of the war on terrorism.

"I thought I had lost my naiveté about the power of big money," Williams told WW minutes after Bush signed the bill. "But even I was naive to think Congress wouldn't do this. There was no notice, no warning, no debate--it just came out of nowhere."

Sitting in his 19th-floor office, with a crystalline view of Mount Hood, Williams, 55, is not exactly your buttoned-down tort geek. Rumpled in a black waistcoat, he sports a gray-white beard and a shoulder-length shag of hair. He holds a master's in philosophy from the University of California-Berkeley, where he studied Wittgenstein and artificial intelligence.

In the mid-'70s, frustrated by intellectual hairsplitting, he quit his doctoral studies and became a truck driver, delivering propane in Montana. "I was in my Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance phase," he explains.

Williams' wanderings eventually led to Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude; in 1978 he moved to Eugene, where his very first case concerned the Dalkon shield, a controversial contraceptive. Since then, he has become one of America's top trial lawyers, litigating issues such as asbestos, breast implants, fen-phen, Propulsid and Rezulin.

His latest obsession is thimerosal (thigh-MARE-oh-sahl), a preservative used in childhood vaccines until 1999. His clients suspect thimerosal, which contains the potent neurotoxin ethylmercury, is responsible for their
children's autism, a devastating neurological disorder that distorts perception, behavior and speech.

The new legislation wipes out all thimerosal cases filed in state courts. Instead, parents are supposed to apply to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, established by Congress in 1986 to handle rare cases of damage from childhood vaccines. The program grants a maximum of $250,000 to families who can prove their children suffered harm; if parents lose, they can file regular lawsuits.

Williams says the program is stacked against his clients in several ways. First, parents must file a claim within three years of their children's first symptoms. Autism is typically not diagnosed until 18 months after the first symptoms appear, and two-thirds of his clients have already missed the deadline. Under the new rules, he says, "they'll never get their day in court."

Second, the burden of proof is harder to meet under NVIC, which requires plaintiffs to show that a majority of scientists agree with them, as opposed to state courts, where they need only find some experts. Third, the limit of $250,000 is considerably lower than the typical award for autism in state court. The lifetime costs of caring for an autistic individual are estimated at $2 million.

Most importantly, the legislation means delay. It takes four to five years to reach a decision under NVIC--an eternity for parents struggling to provide for children who often require round-the-clock care.

The long delay also lengthens the odds against their lawyers, who don't see any money unless they win a case. Williams reckons he will shell out $200,000 in out-of-pocket costs plus $1 million worth of time to bring a single case to trial. Some tort lawyers go bankrupt before they ever get to stand before a jury. "The pharmaceutical companies can hire more lawyers than anyone," Williams says. "It's some of the toughest litigation around."

There is little question that autism is on the rise. Last month, researchers at University of California-Davis concluded that the nearly threefold surge in California's autism rate--which now stands at 4 to 5 per 10,000
people--could not be explained by shifting definitions, misclassification or migration.

Williams suspects the culprit is thimerosal, which was manufactured and marketed by Eli Lilly as a preservative that could be dissolved in the vaccine to stop bacteria from contaminating vials that might contain up to 100 doses in the same jar.

"It was a packaging issue," Williams says. "It was cheaper for the manufacturer to produce multidose vials than to package them as single doses." Unbeknownst to parents, their children were being injected with a few micrograms of mercury along with every dose of vaccine. Starting around 1990,