December 1, 2005



ABC News Tries to Hide Thimerosal-Autism Link

Thursday June 16th 2005, 2:27 pm
Filed under: CensorWorld, Free Speech, Media Watch

A story that involves

  • The connection between vaccines and autism
  • The suppression of information by the Bush Administration
  • Bill Frist protecting drug companies from lawsuits, and
  • ABC News cancelling an interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who planned to discuss these things

From the Huffington Post (anonymous, article has been updated since the quote below):

ABC corporate executives at the network’s highest levels ordered three interviews with Robert Kennedy Jr. pulled from ABC News programming.

The interviews all centered around Mr. Kennedy’s investigation of thimerosal, a mercury based preservative, used in vaccines given to children and believed to be responsible for increasing cases of neurological diseases including autism.

Mr. Kennedy’s interviews were slated for prime shows ABC World News Tonight, 20/20, and Good Morning America. Salon.com and Rolling Stone Magazine have exclusive rights to Mr. Kennedy’s article and they embargoed his story on other networks because of his arrangement with ABC.

Mr. Kennedy’s article was published today only in Rolling Stone and on Salon.com. The article links the CDC, FDA and Bill Frist to major drug companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth, and Aventis Pasteur that continued to include thimerosal in their vaccines despite studies showing the damage – and death – it caused in humans. In the 1990s the CDC and FDA recommended three additional children’s vaccines laced with thimerosal, totaling twenty two federally recommended immunizations.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 from pharmaceutical companies, tacked on the “Eli Lilly Protection Act” as a rider to a 2002 homeland security bill.

The protection act was later repealed by Congress after a public outcry.

Senator Frist is making another attempt to harbor big pharmaceuticals from families with infected children. He is appropriating the war on terror again by attaching a provision to the “Protecting America in the War On Terror” bill introduced to Congress this past January.

A 2001 Emory University Study watched ABC, CBS, and NBC in the Atlanta area for one week and found 907 advertisements for over-the-counter drugs and 428 advertisements for prescription drugs.

This story shows a CCCP: Corporate Controlled Conservative Press.

ABC is more interested in protecting their sponsors and/or the Bush Administration and/or Senator Bill Frist than in helping prevent autism.

More on vaccines and autism and cover-ups at This Modern World.

UPDATE: ABC News responded to the Huffington Post article by saying, “ABC News is hard at work on that report. We will air when and if we deem it ready.”

So while ABC cancelled three interviews with RFK, Jr., maybe they will air at least one. Or maybe not.

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4 Comments so far

However, I would suggest that before buying into the line that Robert Kennedy Jr. is selling you consult another article on this matter, written by a doctor in his blog . His views on the matter are quite different and he accuses Mr. Kennedy and others of shoddy reportorial techniques. And by the way, the interview has apparently been rescheduled.

Comment by Brent McKee 06.17.05 @ 10:21 am

Brent McKee -

That article you linked to uses a lot of obnoxious language.

It also implies that the activists and attorneys quoted by RFK, Jr. shouldn’t be, since they have a supposed conflict which means nothing they say can be trusted.

By that standard, people writing an article could quote almost no one with expertise.

The one part of the article you linked to which seems compelling at first, says:
=============================================
In any case, if thimerosal in vaccines were the cause of autism, we would expect autism rates in Denmark and Canada to have plummeted recently, because Denmark eliminated thimerosal from its vaccines by 1995 and Canada removed them around the same time. No such decrease in autism rates has occurred in either country.
=============================================

However Canada hasn’t banned

From
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/ccdr-rmtc/03vol29/acs-dcc-1/index.html

================================================
In Canada, the vaccines currently used in routine infant immunization do not contain thimerosal (see Table 1). Some hepatitis B vaccines licensed in Canada do, but one formulation with no thimerosal and another with only trace amounts are now available in Canada, and NACI recommends their use in infants preferentially. The two hepatitis B vaccines in which thimerosal is added as a preservative are gradually being phased out. Influenza vaccine also contains thimerosal but is only recommended for use in Canada for those infants > 6 months of age. The other vaccines licensed in Canada that contain thimerosal are primarily used for people travelling to developing countries and are not routinely administered to infants.
================================================

Comment by Eric Jaffa 06.19.05 @ 6:24 pm

In the interest of fairness, here is a study which claims that thimerosal stopped being used in Denmark in 1992 and autism then went UP:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/112/3/604

Comment by Eric Jaffa 06.19.05 @ 6:46 pm

My granddaughter was given a second shot of hepitis B vaccination by mistake, which contained thermersal. This was when she was getting her series of infant vacinations. I have watched the government argue this with a Doctor who beleives that thermersal can be dangerous to infants. I wanted to catch a program on abc this past Thursday, but I missed it. Can you inform me on anything I should be aware of, or to watch for? Why does thermersal even have to be in these vaccinations?
Is my granddaughter at risk for autism? She is 26 months old now, but she’s not talking much, everything else she does seems to be normal.

Comment by jeannie klingler 11.04.05 @ 1:07 pm



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