Introducing our New Executive Director  

It is hard to imagine it has been 10 years since we first alerted the FDA about harm to our children that resulted from exposure to mercury in vaccines and pharmaceutical products. Since early 2000 SafeMinds has worked diligently to raise awareness in an effort to reduce unnecessary exposure to mercury and at the same time funded over 1 million dollars in mercury related research in hopes of finding effective ways to help those harmed.  As we move into the next decade we realize that there is still much work that needs to be done to fulfill our mission of protecting future generations from harm and to restore health to those already injured, both within the U.S. and globally. 

To reach our goals we need expanded programs, resources and manpower.  In early 2011, I had the pleasure of working with Eric Uram in Chiba, Japan during a negotiating meeting with the United Nations Environmental Program regarding a treaty to reduce mercury exposure globally.  Eric has the experience and dedication to help move SafeMinds closer to our goal.  As Co-founder and Director of SafeMinds I will continue to work closely with Eric and the entire board to ensure a mercury-free world for future generations.  

SafeMinds Co-Founder & Vice-President

From the Executive Director:  Eric Uram 

Greetings all,   

I'd like to take an opportunity to introduce myself to all the supporters and friends of SafeMinds.  I'm Eric Uram.  I've been serving as your Executive Director for  a few weeks now.  

So, let me briefly tell you how I arrived here.  When I heard the Executive Director position was opening, I was thrilled at the prospect of working with an organization addressing the mercury issue I had been tracking most all my life and trying to solve from other vantage points for the last 25 years.  In fact, I went to college to find the means to address issues of unnecessary toxic exposures that reduce the ability to learn or think or that shorten lives or promote disease.

After college, I worked at the Sierra Club for ten years on issues related to toxic chemicals in the Great Lakes, to help end that legacy.  While here I truly became educated on mercury - its chemistry, sources and the fate and transport dynamics of the most toxic element known to man (other than plutonium).  In that work I did outreach to the non-traditional allies - including the faith, labor and sporting communities.  For the past five years, I have served very successfully as a consultant to the non-profit community's efforts to help solve the global mercury dilemma.  My company, Headwater LLC, was established as a testament to the fact that when you begin with clean water, it's easier to keep it that way.

But my education and motivation have even deeper roots.  I grew up in a blue-collar community that provided area employment at a number of large factories on the shores of a Great Lake.  Life seemed pretty good for most folks there and the area's abundant lakes and rivers were everyone's playground.

Because of the abundance of water, I spent much of my childhood engaged in a true passion of mine - fishing.  Fishing usually gives one a glimpse into the health of those waters.  But, these apparently healthy fish we were catching carried a toxic legacy.  When eaten in sufficient quantities they posed a health threat to all who did so. 

Cancers and learning disabilities tied to chemical exposures still strike the families who worked at or played near the areas these factories once occupied.  Three Superfund sites remained when I left in the early 1980's, their owners either closed, went bankrupt or moved; leaving the toxic legacy they created.  The man-made Dirty Dozen toxic chemicals and metals like mercury still exist in those waters, but at lower levels thanks to changes in policies about the manufacture, use and disposal as well as money provided to clean up the mess left behind.

The releases that caused the fish to become too toxic occurred due to ignorance of the science regarding the problems or beliefs that nature could quickly purify anything and that enough dilution would eliminate toxicity.  The problem hasn't been totally solved - some, but not all, of these practices have ended and new persistent bioaccumulative toxic chemicals of concern have been identified as problems.

Even now, in all the lakes and streams around my current home in Madison, Wisconsin, we've come to understand the fish are too contaminated with mercury to eat without keeping track of how frequently and how much of what kind of fish you've eaten. 

While we can protect ourselves to some degree by watching what goes into our bodies, we still fail to totally understand how other chemical exposures (including mercury in its many forms) can affect our health and the health of the children we as parents intend to protect, even before they breathe their first breath.

What shocks me is the practice of introducing mercury and other toxic chemicals directly into the bodies of people - at times without even telling them and all in the name of sound medicine and improving public health - is still allowed.  Policies like this make other solutions that much more difficult to implement.

I don't doubt exposures to toxic pollution, like mercury and the Dirty Dozen chemicals, influence our health and our children's ability to live, laugh and learn.  Too much of what I studied and experienced has left me with an impression that we might be creating an even more toxic world for the next generation unless we can change things. 

I admire the strategy SafeMinds has taken for establishing the body of science for this issue; it was a bold path.  I hope we can continue to sustain such actions.

Families supporting the goals of SafeMinds deserve answers to questions and peace of mind, at a minimum; and justice for their sufferings, if appropriate.

I look forward to serving as the Executive Director and helping guide SafeMinds through this next phase as we collectively seek efforts to close the Pandora's Box of problems associated with mercury's toxic legacy. 

By Scott Laster, SafeMinds Board Member

SafeMinds was founded to raise awareness, support research, change policy and focus national attention on the growing evidence that environmental triggers contribute to neurological disorders such as autism, attention deficit disorder, language delay and learning difficulties. Our mission is to restore health and protect future generations by eradicating the devastation of autism and associated health disorders that are induced by environmental triggers. 

A portion of SafeMinds' focus is on the role that vaccines may play in environmentally-induced autism, and SafeMinds members have participated in various governmental vaccine-policy and autism research committees to encourage research in this area. During these efforts it has become increasingly frustrating that public health officials discourage the smart science necessary to determine the mechanisms of vaccine-injury, and often provide incomplete information on vaccine risks and benefits to the public. 

SafeMinds is launching a new website, SmartVax, to change the discourse on vaccines in a manner that will create a positive environment where consumers are informed and scientists are encouraged to pursue the necessary research to gain new scientific understanding of mechanisms of vaccine-injury and vaccine effectiveness.  

The current media use of "anti-vax" and "pro-vax" labeling in vaccine discourse is unhelpful and misleading, since generally organizations do not advocate for no vaccines; this website proposes instead that the prevailing philosophies are more accurately described as "SmartVax" and "Max-Vax", with both supporting vaccines but with SmartVax placing an emphasis on conservative scientific research to understand mechanisms of vaccine-injury and vaccine effectiveness.  On the contrary, the website submits that the "Max-Vax" philosophy prevalent amongst public health officials is suppressing scientific research, and providing incomplete information about risks vs benefits to parents, because of a belief system that maximizing vaccine utilization is the best way to improve children's health.  But science is not about merely accepting beliefs; instead, it is about pursuing the science by rigorously questioning and testing the assumptions. 

To change the discourse, the SmartVax website provides the following:

• A Weigh The Risks quantitative analysis of vaccine risks versus benefits in 21st century America which indicates that vaccine-injury risk (1 in 13 children) is currently quantitatively higher than disease-risk, with and without a USA vaccination program.  The point of this analysis is not to argue against vaccination, since disease risk without a vaccination program would be unacceptably high, but rather to dispel the unproven assumption that vaccines' benefits always exceed risks in the USA today and to issue a siren call to scientists for research to dramatically reduce vaccine-injuries.    
• An Overview describing how the Max-Vax philosophy gained power and how the SmartVax philosophy differs in a manner that is more likely to produce the best health benefits for children in the long-term.  
• A SmartVax Approach to Vaccines that empowers prospective parents with information so that they can make informed decisions on vaccination, including a downloadable spreadsheet tool for creating an individualized vaccine schedule, risks-vs-benefits information on each vaccine and associated disease, and questions for the pediatrician.  
• Guidance on how the public can Take Action for Children's Health to create an environment where the necessary checks-and-balances are created to ensure that the research is performed to understand mechanisms of vaccine-injury and vaccine effectiveness so that smart decisions are made regarding vaccination.

Follow SmartVax on Facebook and let us know what you think in the online conversation there.  Share the website information with the public, including prospective parents.  We plan future articles to explain aspects of the website in more detail.  

New Research Suggests Stronger Environmental Link to Autism

SafeMinds applauds the findings of the study looking at genetic and environmental factors for autism by sixteen California researchers just published in the American Medical Association's journal Archives of General Psychiatry. The researchers, including many gene scientists, found that environmental exposures play a significant role in triggering Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Download full release

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