"On June 7-8, 2000 a secret conference was held at the Simpsonwood Conference Center in Norcross, Georgia to discuss a study examining the link between increasing doses of Thimerosal and neurodevelopmental disorders. The study was done using the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) database, an official governmental data bank collecting patient vaccination information on the children from the health maintenance organizations (HMOs) being paid to participate.
Attending were 51 scientists, representatives of pharmaceutical vaccine manufacturing companies and a representative of the World Health Organization; the public and the media were unlawfully excluded. The conclusions of this meeting were quite startling, since it confirmed a dose-response link between Thimerosal and neurodevelopmental disorders that held up to rigorous statistical analyses.
In their discussion, they make plain why the meeting was held in secret: the conclusions would have destroyed the public’s confidence in the vaccine program, and more importantly, their faith in vaccine authorities. When the results of this study were published three years later in the journal Pediatrics, the “problem” had been fixed, in that by adding another set of data from a third HMO, reorganizing the criteria for inclusion and restructuring the patient groupings, a less than statistically significant link was demonstrated.
In my analysis I discuss the more outrageous statements made during the meeting and how accepted experts in the field of mercury neurotoxicity were excluded from the meeting."
Discussion