Mad as a Hatter

Mad as a hatter. The phrase originated in the English Victorian era because hat makers often went insane due to the handling of mercury in the process of making hats. It has been recognized for more than one hundred years that mercury causes brain damage.

So why do U.S. pharmaceutical firms use a mercury- based preservative for vaccines given to babies and young
children? It saves money. Thimerosal developed by Eli Lilly in the 1930’s is a preservative agent to prevent bacterial and fungal contamination. It also allows multiple injections to be made from one vial of vaccine. One large vial to give many shots is less expensive than bottling vaccines in small individual doses.

The reality is Thimerosal use in vaccines is unimaginably more
expensive than the non-mercury alternatives. Not to the drug
companies. But for the millions of families who now have
children with autism or neurological disorders due to mercury
poisoning. Maybe the updated American term should be: Mad
as a drug company.

Unfortunately for American families the madness was
even more widespread than the drug companies. In 1997
Congress passed a resolution requiring the FDA to review
mercury in drugs and biologics. The meeting to review findings
resulting from the Congressional mandate was held secretly in
June 2000. Under federal “Sunshine Laws” a public
announcement should have been made in advance of the
meeting. No such announcement was made and the meeting
notes were withheld from the public until 2003. Access to the
database was withheld until 2005. As of September 2007 only
one independent scientist has been allowed to study the data.
The embargo of the meeting notes and data appear to be in
direct violation of the federal Freedom of Information Act.

The secret meeting held at Simpsonwood was organized
by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The
CDC went to great lengths to ensure everything discussed in the
meeting remained totally secret. Meeting participants included
high level officials from the FDA and CDC, vaccine specialists
from the World Health Organization, and representatives from
each of the major vaccine manufacturers: Aventis Pasteur,
Glaxo-SmithKline, Merck, and Wyeth. Throughout the meeting
the CDC reminded everyone no copies of any documents could
be made and no papers could be taken from the meeting. No
paper trails and sadly no whistleblowers.

The spy-like secretiveness of the meeting was due to the
frightening news that a mercury-based preservative,
Thimerosal, used in children’s vaccines was responsible for
autism in the U.S. to increase to the staggering ratio of one in
every 150 children. The CDC epidemiologist who had analyzed
the database of medical records for 100,000 children admitted he
was stunned. According to the meeting minutes eventually
released, Dr. Tom Verstraeten told the assembled group, “When
I saw this, and I went back through the literature, I was actually
stunned by what I saw because I thought it plausible.”
(relationship of Thimerosal and autism which his analysis uncovered)
He goes on to cite the many earlier studies done by others that
had found a positive relationship between Thimerosal and
autism, attention-deficit disorder, speech delays, and
hyperactivity. All of these are neurological development
disorders.