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CDC Sponsors Public Engagement on Swine Flu Vaccine, Science Deemed Secondary to Policy Decisions and Questions Remain
By Theresa Wrangham SafeMinds President
 As the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) holds the first round in a series of public engagement sessions designed to promote public discussion on how pandemic swine flu vaccine will be made available to the public, many questions remain unanswered in terms of the safety of the vaccine being developed.
Dr. Roger Bernier and Capt. Raymond Strikas were present at the Denver public engagement session held on August 8th, which I attended to get answers to questions that remain as a result of July meetings held by the FDA Vaccine and Related Biologic Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Imagine my amazement as Dr. Bernier opened the meeting by stating that we "can't pick the right answer based on science and data." and I was pleasantly surprised that I was not alone in my questions around safety. It seemed as though roughly half of those attending had many of the same questions I did - it did not bode well for CDC. However, as the meeting progressed it was clear that the public engagement session was not going to be centered on answers to our questions; rather attendees were being asked to make policy decisions based on incomplete assumptions furnished to them by the CDC. The purpose of the endeavor as far as I could ascertain was to take the pulse of the public in determining the level of response the public felt was necessary in pursuing a vaccination program for the new swine flu vaccine under development. Read more.
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CDC Public Engagement Meeting Schedule
The next round of public engagement sessions are being held August 15th. Below are links to register for these meetings and registration is a requirement to attend. Additional information is available here.
Vincennes, Indiana, Saturday, August 15Birmingham, Alabama, Saturday, August 15Sacramento, California, Saturday, August 15El Paso, Texas, Saturday, August 22Spokane, Washington, Saturday, August, 29 Additional meetings are being planned in the following cities. Please check back frequently for registration information.
Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Saturday, Aug 22
New York, New York, Saturday, Aug 22
Somerville, Massachusetts, Saturday, Aug 29
The public must keep pressing for answers to these important safety questions. Please consider going to these meetings!
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"Can You Hear Me Now?!"
What
will it take for Dr. Tom Insel to hear the message coming at
him from all directions? It's time for real vaccine safety research.
By Katie Wright
 I first read the Interagency Autism
Coordinating Committee (IACC) member roster and thought why does the National
Institute for Deafness have a seat on an autism research committee? Then
again, maybe there was common ground!
Maybe Dr. James Battey of the National Institute on Deafness should take
over IACC entirely because he is an expert on the hearing impaired, a condition
that seems to affect almost every member of IACC.
IACC
was created as a direct result of the hard work of thousands of families with
autistic children who called, wrote and even visited their congress people and
Senators to get the Combating Autism Act (CAA) passed. Parents organized phone campaigns and sit-ins
in offices of non-supportive legislators. My parents, Bob and Suzanne
Wright, traveled to DC dozens of times to lobby for our families, in efforts to
rectify the near total absence of autism research within the NIH. Families
everywhere worked tirelessly, and at their own expense, in order to make the
CAA law. Read more. |
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Top 10 Sources of Mercury you can do Something About - #1 Fish Consumpation
By Katie Weisman for the SafeMinds Environmental Committee
 Most of us know that fish can contain mercury and that
eating too much of certain species can harm your health. But, do you know how to eat fish safely to
protect yourself and your family?
The mercury in fish is methylmercury, which is one type of
organic mercury. Organic mercury is
particularly harmful to all living beings because it can enter any cell in the
body. Mercury is a neurotoxin and
fetuses, infants and young children (under 6) are most vulnerable to its
effects as their brains are still developing.
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) reports that "Chronic, low-dose
prenatal methylmercury exposure from maternal consumption of fish has been
associated with...poor performance on neurobehavioral tests, particularly on
tests of attention, fine-motor function, language, visual-spatial abilities
(e.g. drawing) and verbal memory". In
adults, symptoms of mercury poisoning include fatigue, pain, numbness, stomach
upset, memory loss, confusion and insomnia. Read more.
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IOM to Meet on Vaccine Adverse Affects
The Institute of Medicine will hold its third open session of the Committee to Review Adverse Effects of Vaccines August 26, 2009 in Room 100 of the Keck Center of the National Academies, located at 500 5th Street NW, Washington, DC from 9:45 am to 1:00 pm. SafeMinds previously submitted concerns and requests with the committee and encourages the community to participate in this process. The public may listen to the meeting proceedings by dialing 1-800-508-7891 and the room number *1979783* to enter the meeting - the * star key is required before and after the room number. No real-time questions and comments over the phone will be taken, however comments or other information for committee consideration may be submitted to vaccinesafety@nas.edu. Please direct any audio problems during the call to the project e-mail at vaccinesafety@nas.edu or dial *10* to be directed to the meeting help desk. All public comments submitting will included in the Public Access File with all identifying information intact.
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A Win for Us . . . FDA Changes Website
From Charles Brown at Consumers for Dental Health
The first crack in FDA's armor has appeared, folks. This morning,
FDA changed its website, adding this sentence: "High levels of
mercury vapor exposure are associated with adverse effects in the brain and
the kidneys." (Go to http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/ProductsandMedicalProcedures/DentalProducts/DentalAmalgam/ucm171094.htmand scroll down to
"Potential Risks"). Prior to this, the website did not
explain to consumers the damage caused by mercury at all.
Congratulations to all of us in the mercury-free dentistry
movement. FDA realizes that its website, like its rule, is a
cover-up of the existence and risk of mercury, so its lawyers are trying to
ease FDA into a more defensible position (see e-mail below).
But it is still "the Henry Schein Amalgam rule." It still
allows the nation's #1 distributor of mercury amalgam, Henry Schein
Inc. untrammeled rights to market amalgam for everyone, even pregnant women,
without even disclosing the mercury to patients. (As you will recall,
Schein paid Margaret Hamburg about a million bucks to be its director during
her revolving-door time outside of government.)
But it is still "the Henry Schein Amalgam rule." It still
allows the nation's #1 distributor of mercury amalgam, Henry Schein
Inc. untrammeled rights to market amalgam for everyone, even pregnant women,
without even disclosing the mercury to patients. (As you will recall,
Schein paid Margaret Hamburg about a million bucks to be its director during
her revolving-door time outside of government.)
The website still does not re-instate the language FDA agreed in writing in
2008 to maintain on its website: "Dental
amalgams contain mercury, which may have neurotoxic effects on the nervous
systems of developing children and fetuses." In
particular the website still fails to inform consumers that young children
and unborn children are especially susceptible to the effects of
mercury. FDA does not want parents to know about this danger to
children even though it admits that this information is true (buried deep in
the labeling intended for dentists in the new rule's special controls,
the agency writes that "The developing neurological systems in fetuses
and young children may be more sensitive to the neurotoxic effects of mercury
vapor").
Now that you had an impact writing Deputy Commissioner Sharfstein. our next
step will be to write your Representative in Congress. My next e-mail
will suggest talking points and the route to e-mail and to phone him or her.
FDA is covering up the mercury risks, but doing so a little bit less than
yesterday. We move forward; they retreat. In the words of our
first naval hero John Paul Jones, "We have not yet begun to
fight."
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General Motors Refusing Responsiblity for Mercury Clean-up
In a surprising move this week, General Motors is pulling its
support for a program to recycle mercury-containing switches from its
old vehicles before they are scrapped. The company is arguing that
since its bankruptcy reorganization, it is no longer responsible for
the pollution caused by products of the "old" General Motors. Read more. |
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