At Buzzflash.com columnist Gloria R. Lalumia writes about Seymour Hersh's latest speech at New Mexico State University (Las Cruces) March 29. Hersh describes the bizarre insulated world Bush is in, and delineates in great detail why the Bush world view, and the real world view, are worlds apart.
In a recent Blog, Jesse Kornbluth kept repeating "so much to say." I have that feeling about this post too. Fasten your seatbelts"it's going to be a bumpy read. I can actually tie it all together, so that the title above will even make sense.
I found a thorough yet concise discussion of the debate about teaching "Intelligent Design" in schools in a Los Angeles Times op-ed column, "Not Intelligent, and Surely Not Science," written by Michael Shermer. As a school kid, I watched reruns of the movie Inherit the Wind, a fictional version of the actual 1925 Scopes "monkey" trial. The case was about banning the teaching of evolution in schools because it was not the biblical version of the origin of life on earth. To me as a teenager, this story of this trial seemed about as remote as a movie about the Middle Ages or ancient Rome, because the idea of learning a scientific idea, much of which had come to be proven through the years since Darwin wrote the text, was as obvious and normal as going to school in the first place. And the arguments in the movie, of banning the teaching of this science because of some religious zealots down south, well, that made for a riveting courtroom drama, but 1925 seemed like ancient history, and we were way beyond that kind of provincial backward thinking by 1960.
Skip ahead 40 years from my movie-watching, and 80 years from the "Monkey" trial, and the astounding debate rages on, with the religion proponents turning to the euphemism of "Intelligent Design" as what they want taught along with Darwinian evolution in our children's schools. Shermer explains the history and sociology of this debate:
"If intelligent design is not science, then what is it? One of its
originators, Phillip Johnson, a law professor at UC Berkeley, wrote in a 1999 article: "The objective is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism versus evolution to the existence of God versus the nonexistence of God. From there people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus.' "
This leads me to the amazing interview with Gore Vidal which Mr. Korbluth cites in his blog. I love reading Gore Vidal, and I love hearing him talk. In the printed interview, we must be satisfied with imagining his intonation while discussing life, society, and politics in these here United States. Vidal is almost 80, as lucent and illuminating as ever and as anyone, perhaps more knowledgeable than most political and sociological analysts, surely more entertaining, and seriously warning about what "We, the people," have let happen to our fine republic. Answering a question, Vidal gives some meaning to the forces Bush appeals to in his push for his objectives:
"Interviewer:
'There's a palpable sense of mean- spiritedness about a good
deal of public sentiment, it seems'
Vidal: 'I wouldn't call it the
public. There are groups that rather like it. And these are the same groups that don't like black people, gay people, Jews, or this or that. You always have that disaffected minority that you can play to. And it helps you in states with small populations. If you get eight of those states, you don't get much of a popular vote, but you can get the Electoral College. He's not popular. I've just been reading a report on Conyers' trip to Ohio with his subcommittee's experts. Ohio was stolen. The Republican Congress will never have a hearing on it. But I think attempts are being made to publish the details of what was done there, and elsewhere too in America.'
"Believed an independent India should emulate Hitler's treatment of religious minorities, which he thoroughly approved of"[Golwalkar wrote]"Germany has shown how well-nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures having differences going to the root to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by "The foreign races in Hindusthan [i.e., the Muslims] must adopt Hindu culture, language--wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing--not even citizen's rights."
"Aware, particularly after his visit to Berlin in 1937, of the mobilizing power of racism, Mussolini was now 'trying very hard to be wicked.' The anti-Jewish policy was 'aimed at toughening up the Italians' more out of desperate emulation than owing to any beliefs about the nature of 'the Jewish spirit.' "
Since the Republican-controlled congress showed such fervor over trying to get a feeding tube re-inserted into the clinically-unresponsive Terry Schiavo, were you wondering how members of congress react to the requests of medical lobbyists for funding that could save millions of lives? The Associated Press, via CNN, has the tidy, ironic answer to this question in a comprehensive yet simple study: they don’t. As one physician, who is looking for money to have Medicare screening for aortic aneurysms in older people, puts it, “Yes, the Schiavo case is tragic, but the reality is on average about 40 people a day are going to be dying of ruptured aneurysms." But there’s no political hay to be made over funding that wouldn’t make even a minor headline. So we could say that Terry Schiavo’s life is worth a million of the rest of ours, to congress, that is.
By the way, the brief comment in the AP article, about the flu vaccine not being profitable for the manufacturer--that's another pharmaceutical-company fabrication to throw more smoke into the public-relations mirrors of the multi-billion dollar vaccine business. That's enough to really make me sick.
Last week reports stated that the United States is authorizing the sale to Pakistan of F-16 fighter jets capable of delivering nuclear warheads. Besides obviously irritating India, a nuclear-powered US ally, many other ramifications of this proposed sale indicate a lack of understanding by the Bush administration of how serious is this “game” of spreading around nukes.
In case I was not going to have time to check into all this myself, as usual Robert Scheer has done the necessary homework, and even put it all together into a -- also as usual -- well-documented and cleverly-worded op-ed piece in today’s Los Angeles Times titled, "A Con Job by Pakistan's Pal, George Bush." If you’re not in the mood to get aggravated, pissed off, and gain a further sense of powerlessness over the short-sighted policies of our heads of government and big business, then don’t read Scheer’s column. If you want to learn new things about “Bush the Brazen,” then check on Mr. Scheer's piece (above). Indeed it is the emmes!
…link to meaning of “emmes”
Every so often we hear about or read some ideas that we hadn’t heard or read before. These ideas may not be new themselves, but maybe the author expresses them in a fresh way. Humor helps as well. Today’s Los Angeles Times Book Review section features just such a writer. Her name is Anne Lamott, and her book is Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. Bernadette Murphy discusses the book in her brief and enlightening review.
What do I like about this work? The ideas presented pretty closely match what this blog is up to. Lamott meshes politics and spirituality in a way not only profound, but clever in style, according to Murphy. Lamott easily articulates values of the higher ends of the spirituality and religion, including surrender and forgiveness. Even the uninitiated could understand what has helped Lamott through her life crises, without any special religious reference. One great message from the review is, “Christian or Jew, Muslim or Buddhist, she affirms, we are all members of the human family.” One of my favorite quotes is from John F. Kennedy, after the Cuban Missile Crisis:
Murphy also shows that Lamott attempts to use forgiveness in politics, sighting her disappointment at the direction of the Bush administration. My particular enthusiasm about this work is the amount of humor involved to illuminate the ideas. I could learn a lot from the title alone, “Plan B.”“For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."
I would like to call attention to a review in the New York Review of Books. Entitled "More Than Fit to Print," It is written by Anthony Lewis, former long time editorial columnist for the New York Times, about a new book called, Inside the Pentagon Papers, by John Prados (Editor) and Margaret Pratt Porter (Editor). Mr. Lewis writes with an easy style that brings intense insight into an amazing transition period for the press, the government, and relations between the two. What is really telling, is how deceitful US officials were, and by extension, how little has changed since then.
When we think of the banana republics and CIA intrusion into Latin American governments in the 1950's, of which many of us have been long aware, we think of strange days long gone that could never happen now with the scrutiny of the press in the post-Watergate era. Well, think again. There were plenty of attempts by the Nixon people to paint Daniel Ellsberg, Rand Corporation defense analyst who leaked the thousands of pages of documents nicknamed "The Pentagon Papers," as a psychological weirdo. Similarly, when Seymour Hersh wrote in a fervently-researched and documented work, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, of striking instances of prisoner abuse by American soldiers in the Iraq War, he was all but attacked by a right-wing backlash which tried everything from discrediting his sources to ad-homonym arguments about his non-journalistic bias.
The good news is that Inside the Pentagon Papers will indeed serve to remind all of us how we need to remain vigilant, especially as we are told by the powers-that-be that we don't need to be, because they are looking after our interests.
A great column is written daily by Jesse Kornbluth, book, magazine and internet author/editor. The site he writes on is Beliefnet.com, and the commentaries, under the name/guise of "Swami Uptown," are brilliant, ironic, clever, and delve into the sublevel of what the press is not covering.
Today's entry by Kornbluth starts with the following warning, a quote from his column, that my title refers to. With Schiavo, Blake, Jackson, Bonds, and the Pope taking up the headlines, we're hearing nothing about Iraq, where we have 150,000 troops and several hundred billion dollars invested. Kornbluth simply states
"So much to say. Starting with: Have you noticed there's no news coming out of Iraq now? None. No news is never good news, not with this government."
[my bold italics]
Mr. Kornbluth's entire entry is worth reading.
The number one news story of the past few days is whether or not Terry Schiavo, the woman in Florida who is considered to be in a "vegetative state," should be taken off life support and allowed to die. I have chosen not to discuss issues about this case because to me it is a page 30 story and not a front page one, and it's prioritizing by the American press shows what kind of condition the American press is in--not good. To further aggravate this outlandish emphasis on a non-important story, Congress over the weekend played out the unusual and absurd circus of voting on a law, at midnight no less, which they knew the courts would not listen to. Then Bush was awakened in his jammies to sign this junk, simply to make this issue a banner for the Republican so-called "morals and values" hammering-home to the numb sheep of the public willing to be swayed.
So, you ask, why am I discussing this now that I said that those who do bring this story to the forefront are simply gossip-mongers and silly? I received an email from Moveon.org yesterday which referred to this debacle of a misuse of legislative power and resources, and said that a memo was circulated among the Republican members of congress regarding taking up the Schiavo "cause." The Moveon email said that ABC News had uncovered this memo. The specific mention on the ABC web site is as follows:
"ABC News obtained talking points circulated among Senate Republicans explaining why they should vote to intervene in the Schiavo case. Among them, that it is an important moral issue and the 'pro-life base will be excited,' and that it is a 'great political issue...this is a tough issue for Democrats.' "
Moveon's email characterized the use of this memo: "This story also takes the heat off Tom DeLay, who is facing a number of serious ethics charges and legal scandals." Frist and Delay also condemned the memo, naturally.
The point of bringing this up today is to make sure we all are aware that this congress, and this president and his administration, are not working for us as public servants, but in fact are working for the big donors who paid to put them in office. These big money businesses and individuals may or may not have interests that coincide with the rest of us. As Arianna Huffington stated in her column this week, when congress and the president gave favorable dispensation and legislation to the auto and oil industries, it didn't help Joe Doaks and his family out there trying to keep up with increasing gas prices and everything else that's gotten tossed aside:
"And our leaders in Washington--their pockets stuffed with oil, gas and auto-industry donations--have been willing accomplices in this financial fiasco."
The "smoke and mirrors" game of this Republican administration and congress, which keeps the press and hopefully for them, the rest of us, preoccupied with non-issues such as Schiavo live-or-die, Social Security, and morals and values, instead of the real problems facing this country, like poverty, racism, war in Iraq, underfunding of our schools and on and on--it's working as long as we the public, who are not being properly served, let it.
Today's column from the New York Times by Frank Rich, "The God Racket, From DeMille to DeLay," is well-documented and clever in dredging up and out what is the problem with combining morality, politics, and religion. My favorite quote refers to what percentage of our fellow Americans really relate to these fundamentalist Christian views in light of the Schiavo case:
"All this is happening while polls consistently show that at most a fifth of the country subscribes to the religious views of those in the Republican base whom even George Will, speaking last Sunday on ABC's "This Week," acknowledged may be considered 'extremists.' "
Mr. Rich's entire column is worth digesting. Just as Emperor Claudius said, "Let all the poisons come out," maybe if it gets worse, and these arrogant, non-responsive elected officials make more glaring mistakes, and really, truly, "the poisons come out..." maybe they'll bring themselves down. Even so, our vigilance is still required.
Barbara Loe Fisher, co-Founder of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC.org), writes a lead-in to the latest article about the issue of anthrax vaccine in the military:
"Informed consent to medical procedures which carry a risk of injury or death, such as vaccination, is nothing less than a human right regardless of whether it is exercised in a military or civilian setting. Under legislation enacted by Congress to respond to terrorism threats (Project Bioshield Act), extraordinary power was given to the Secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services to invoke"Emergency Use" (EU) of unapproved drugs and vaccines without giving informed consent. In this, the first attempt to exercise EU authority, the Secretary of Health has enabled the Secretary of Defense to defy a U.S.District Court judge's order that all use of anthrax vaccine without informed consent in the military be stopped. Government officials, eager to exercise their authority, have consistently opposed the right to informed consent whether it applies to parents and their children or military personnel. Congress should take a second look at whether it is wise to give three unelected government officials the power to waive informed consent rights when a person takes a risk of dying or becoming permanently injured by a drug or vaccine."
My dearest friend of my life, Christopher Dickey, reports for Newsweek on the Middle East. He is the Paris Bureau Chief, Middle East Regional Editor, stationed in Paris. His ongoing column, Shadowland, describes the Iraq war and all issues connected, from the point of view of a war correspondent who has known the parties involved for twenty five years. Chris has interviewed government heads, terrorists, middle-level combatants and so on, up close and personal. His current piece is the most telling and personal yet, and deserves to be read by everyone who has a feeling about our troops in Iraq. There is also a selection of email responses to the article, which cut to the core of the emotions and issues of loved ones in uniform.
The title of this posting, "Type 1 Diabetes: An Immune Disorder," is from a subheading of a book, Diabetes: Fight It with the Blood Type Diet, by Peter J. D'Adamo and Catherine Whitney. The description of contracting Type 1 Diabetes relates to my posting of March 17, 2005, which stated, "The unnatural and detrimental effect of injecting toxins directly into the bloodstream is that it disrupts the immune system so drastically, that autoimmune disfunction can result, along with many other complications."
Dr. D'adamo says the following about Type 1 Diabetes:
The Schiavo case is getting ridiculous publicity, despite the importance to the immediate family members. 1500 American GI's have died to secure Iraq as a puppet country for the Bush people. Americans are struggling under the increase of commodities due to the huge increase in gasoline, while the oil companies reap enormous windfall profits. Congress and our President Bush stand by and ignore these issues, but they lose sleep and convene over a woman's right to live or die in Florida, to make a political point, which affects none of us citizens.
In order not to give more dignity to this press sensation I was not going to mention the Schiavo problem in this blog. But then, the husband of the woman who is the center of the entire issue, Michael Schiavo, has a point of view, and gave an emotional and articulate statement today that confirms what we stated here.
Enough said now. Republican congress and Mr. Bush: Get Real!
The CDC reports that rubella is no longer a health threat in the US. As I have mentioned before, those who need to be informed -- MD's, parents, the public -- already are aware of the issues of vaccine injury surrounding the rubella vaccine. So now the "front" agency for the money-fat pharmaceutical companies announces that rubella isn't a problem, which allows for the slow but sure backing-out of a specified rubella vaccine program. It's a lot easier to say the problem was solved by inoculation, and then remove that unsafe vaccine because of it's PR-induced success, than to admit that it was dangerous in the first place and should not to be given anymore.
The latest reports of fears of thimerosol, or mercury-based preservative, causing autism in vaccines have been a mere interruption and distraction from the real threat to human health--vaccines themselves. At least the issue is now widely known, so parents can investigate and make informed decisions for themselves without being brow-beaten by the medical community. The National Vaccine Information Center, NVIC.org, is a good place to start.
In the course of writing a book, as yet unpublished, about prejudice and bigotry in our society titled, Pardon My Prejudice, I am continually amazed that, just when I think everything has been already said on the subject, a new thought emerges. Today's Los Angeles Times letters section has several critiques of a lengthy opinion section from last week [March 13] on racial problems in Los Angeles. In one particular response, the writer, Sikivu Hutchinson, intelligently describes what she thought was the problem with the Times' approach, mainly the cool disconnected view of white liberals regarding a typical inner-city seething den of issues related to disadvantaged minorities. Her reference to Barak Obama's contention is a short and profound answer to the question of my entire book: why is racism so easily prevalent in our daily lives. Forget about all the complex ethnic orientations and bigotry that comes from that--the core problem still comes down to what one person perceives as different from himself in his surroundings, on a totally superficial level--"If you look different, especially if you have a different skin color, you must be different, and maybe you're also not as good as me because you are different."
The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), a central data collection agency for issues regarding vaccines, periodically distributes press releases and articles from other entities about this subject. As I mentioned in previous postings, the medical community is well aware of the problems of the vaccine program as are those of us who are knowledgeable and informed about the problems. So the following excerpt from "Byronchild" is nothing new, but this time, someone basically got "caught in the act." The entire article is worth reading after the excerpt which follows.
On January 24, 2005 -- the same day the Global Alliance for
Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) announced the receipt of $750 million for its
historic world vaccination campaign -- seven US Senators introduced Senate Bill
3 . The bill is an unprecedented act giving comprehensive liability protections
to vaccine manufacturers , restricting Freedom of Information Acts on
drug/vaccine safety, and pre-empting states' rights to ban mercury from
children's vaccines, all under the bill's official title: ‘‘Protecting America
in the War on Terror Act of 2005''.
Meanwhile in Texas, a US District Court
judge has ordered the worlds' “big five” vaccine manufacturers to “produce any
and all documents relating to payments made to, or stock ownership” by the
seventeen members of the Institute of Medicine's Immunization and Safety Review
Committee who issued a report last year denying a link between childhood
vaccines and the country's autism epidemic.
The judge issued the order after
receiving a leaked internal transcript in the first civil juried lawsuit against
the vaccine manufacturers that allegedly proves the Institutes of Medicine's
committee members “predetermined the necessity of not finding causality between
vaccines and autism and/or neurological injury” in its official reports on the
issue.
Arianna Huffington's op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times is a perfect example of Essential Emmes. While the press pundits, and therefore the American Public sheep followers, are seeing the recent events in the Mideast as ratification of Bush and company's (for lack of a more nebulous phrase) "foreign policy," Arianna clearly explains that these events might have happened without any push from the outside. The key to the truth behind her column lies in the clever and cogent references to logic and recent current events. How urgently problematical the Bush back-slapping is only time will tell. I am troubled by the quote of Bill Maher, an important and intelligent gadfly, which shows he thinks there is substance to the applause for Bush's policies. I am not a Bush hater, nor a constant and consistent nay-sayer out of hand. In fact, he seems like a fine fellow whom I would like to like. It's just that the world isn't all black and white, and Huffington's in-depth analysis points right to the areas of grey that are clearer than the seemingly evil/good scenario our powers-that-be would like us to swallow.
The latest study shows that mercury released from coal-fired power plants in Texas coincides with a 17% increase in childhood autism. Mercury is known to be a toxin to humans. Lately even certain fish have gotten the warning signal not to be eaten by pregnant women etc on signs in restaurants. Before we get to the issue of vaccines causing autism because of the high mercury levels, let's look at the mercury/autism issue alone.
Autism, along with many childhood developmental problems including dyslexia, ADD, ADHD, pervasive developmental delay, and other problems such as asthma and diabetes, are autoimmune dysfunctions. In other words, something in the immune system which has gone wrong, is causing the brain to develop more slowly, or insufficiently, thereby causing symptoms manifesting in autism etc. Vaccines contain toxins which are theoretically supposed to cause the human immune system to "take and picture" of that toxin, or germ, and create antibodies against it so that if a real attack comes of that germ or toxin, the immune system will be fortified and "ready" to stave it off completely.
Sounds great in theory, doesn't it? This idea goes back 200 years to the development of a vaccine against small pox. This "theory" of the mechanism of vaccines is 200 years old! Does that make it great? Does that mean it works? I have a TV, as most of us do, that is from the era of pre-high-definition, or digital. It is a regular color TV, based on a system that was invented 70 years ago. It is obsolete. It is not very good or clear compared to the new high-definition sets. The vaccine theory is older, more archaic, and just as obsolete as the old color TV's are now.
Vaccines can have a temporary effect on immunity. Actual germs confer lifelong immunity in many cases. The problem with vaccines is the baggage that comes with them. The unnatural and detrimental effect of injecting toxins directly into the bloodstream is that it disrupts the immune system so drastically, that autoimmune disfunction can result, along with many other complications. The medical community would have us believe that "bad reactions" to vaccines can happen, but are rare and the risk is so low, vs the reward of immunity conferred by the vaccines, is worth it. The truth is, vaccine toxins effect detrimentally each and every one who is vaccinated, to a greater or lesser degree. The person who does not have an immediate bad reaction to a vaccine as a child may develop cancer earlier in life than would have happened without the vaccination. Many scenarios could be drawn from the idea that vaccines are bad for the human immune system.
Many books have been written through the years covering all this in more detail. The reason for this basic summary is to coincide with the study of mercury and coal plants today. It's clear that the toxins in vaccines cause autism, and if mercury causes autism as well, it's possible the mercury (thimerisol) - containing vaccines make it easier for the toxin to affect the individual because of the debilitating effect on the system of mercury.
Don't be deceived--the medical community, pediatricians, pharmaceutical companies who manufacture vaccines, and the responsible government agencies all know about the harmful effect of vaccines. Many of these groups and individuals constantly roll out the "party line" that vaccines have saved modern man from the scourge of polio, whooping cough, tetanus, just to name a few former childhood diseases. They have a lot to gain from this propaganda, most of it in the form of cash. They will have us all ignore modern methods of sanitation, food preservation, and the availability of antibiotics which have all lessened the incidence of diseases such a diphtheria and polio, the latter of which was often spinal meningitis misdiagnosed as polio. The thousandfold upswing in cases of childhood autism, asthma, and other auto-immune dysfunctional diseases is clearly related directly to the same upsurge in vaccine doses.
Today's report of the study of mercury causing autism from coal fired power plants is still a good beginning to having cases of vaccine injury brought before the courts to have this issue studied more intensely. This press release from the office of congressman Dan Burton is also effective in bringing more cases of vaccine injury and its causes into legal and public scrutiny:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MARCH 16, 2005
REP. BURTON INTRODUCES NATIONAL VACCINE INJURY COMPENSATION PROGRAM
IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2005
Washington, D.C. - Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN-5), formally introduced the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Improvement Act of 2005 (H.R.1349) in the U.S. House of Representatives last night. "The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) was designed back in 1988 to be a non-adversarial alternative to civil litigation," stated congressman Burton. "Seventeen years later, the reality is that the system has become quite litigious and there are some serious problems with the program. I amre-introducing this important legislation to address the fairness and accessibility issues vaccine-injured families are facing." Continued Congressman Burton, "Specifically, my legislation seeks to amend the current VICP rules by extending the statute of limitations, increasing the base amount of funding available to those injured, and providing a critical two-year look back provision for families who previously missed the filing deadlines."The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Improvement Act of 2005(H.R. 1349) is tri-partisan legislation - currently with a dozenco-sponsors - that builds upon recommendations to improve the VICP as outlined by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines. The bill seeks to:· Extend the statute of limitations for seeking compensation to six years from the date of injury. Under current law, families must file within two years of a child's death or three years of a child's injury.· Provide a one-time, two-year period for families with post-1988 injuries to file a petition if they were previously excluded from doing so because they missed the statute of limitations.· Allow for the payment of interim attorney's fees and legal costs while a petition is being adjudicated. The costs of assembling the necessary medical records and obtaining expert witnesses are substantial.Under current law, these costs, as well as attorney's fees, are not reimbursed until a case is fully resolved, which oftentimes takes three to seven years. Some cases have taken ten years to resolve and for reimbursements to be made.· Increase compensation for future lost earnings for injured children. Under current law, compensation is based on the average weekly earnings of full and part-time workers as determined by the Bureau of Labor statistics. This bill would specify that only full-time workers should be used in the calculation.· Increase the level of compensation to a family after a vaccine-related death from $250,000 to $300,000. The death benefit has remained unchanged since the program's inception fifteen years ago.· Allow for families of vaccine-injured children to be compensated for the costs of family counseling.· Create and maintain a guardianship to administer the funds.During his tenure as Chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform(1997-2002) and the Subcommittee on Human Rights & Wellness (2003-2004),Congressman Burton held no fewer than 20 hearings to examine the possible correlation between mercury-containing vaccines and the increasing incidents of autism. Despite the growing body of evidence suggesting such an association is real, many in our Federal health agencies continue to dispute this conclusion. Scientific evidence aside, the numbers simply do not lie.Although autism used to be a rare disease affecting only 1 out of every 10,000 individuals, it now afflicts 1.5 million Americans nationwide. Furthermore, autism is not a fatal disease. Therefore, the families of autistic individuals are facing high-priced medical care for years to come with little to no assistance. Concluded Congressman Burton, "By enacting these common-sense reforms, we can make sure the VICP operates as it was intended to, as a flexible,non-adversarial system that handles claims in an efficient and generous manner so as to avoid the need for civil litigation. I believe creating a stronger VICP is a win-win solution for everyone involved. The families of those afflicted with vaccine injuries will have a fair and user-friendly venue to seek some means of restitution, and pharmaceutical companies will no longer be under the shadow of the threat of costly and potentially industry-crippling class-action lawsuits. Embracing this solution would be good for the industry as well as society.""The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has helped thousands of Americans who have suffered injuries from vaccines, however, there are many families and individuals that continue to suffer unnecessarily," said Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr., the lead Democratic co-sponsor. "I am proud to support this legislation because it will improve the current system and ensure fair and timely recourse for the devastating events that can result from vaccinations."The Department of Health and Human Services, upon reviewing the recommendations of the CDC's Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines,submitted suggested legislation in 1999, which the Bush administration has since endorsed. H.R. 1349 incorporates most of these recommendations, as well as other recommendations that were put forth during the course of Congressman Burton's six year investigation.For more information regarding Congressman Burton's legislative and investigative efforts on Federal vaccine policy, please visit the designated health care page on his website at www.house.gov/burton/wellness.
