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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responds to a reader's scrutiny of key quotations in his article "Deadly Immunity." Plus: Grateful readers thank Kennedy.
Jun 25, 2005 | [Read "Deadly Immunity," by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
The article "Deadly immunity" by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. centers around the June 2000 CDC meeting at Simpsonwood, the transcript of which supposedly reveals that a CDC study shows that thimerosal was the cause of childhood autism. However, many of the central and most damning statements in the article are mischaracterizations of some participants' statements.
The most egregious error occurs in the article's lead-in summary, and again on the first page of the piece. The article lead-in states, in part: "When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism in thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data."
And the article elaborates, on Page 1: "According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children."
These two statement are false. Here is the direct quote by Mr. Verstraeten from the transcript of the conference regarding his study's findings on a link between thimerosal and autism (Page 44): Tom Verstraeten: "This is the result for autism, in which we don't see much of a trend except for a slight, but not significant, increase for the highest exposure. The overall test for trend is not statistically significant."
Regardless of the validity of other parts of the article, the primary claim made in the article that the transcripts of the Simpsonwood conference show that Dr. Verstraeten asserted that "thimerosal ... appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism" is simply false. Not only does Dr. Verstraeten never state that thimerosal is responsible for a "dramatic increase" in the disease as you claim he does, he does not even draw a relationship between thimerosal and a risk factor for autism. To be clear, on the correlation between thimerosal exposure and autism, he states, "The overall test for trend is not statistically significant."
I take issue with other parts of your article as well.
Article, Page 1: "Dr. John Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization, declared flatly that the study 'should not have been done at all.'"
This quote is erroneous on several levels. First, it says that Dr. Clements 'DECLARED FLATLY that the study 'should not have been done at all.'" This is false; he says (Page 247): " ... PERHAPS this study should not have been done at all." Your intentional deletion of the word "perhaps," which permits your inaccurate characterization of the statement as a "flat declaration," dangerously undermines your credibility.
Further, you truncate the end of Dr. Clements' quote in a way that radically alters its meaning. Here is the full quote (Page 247): John Clements: "And I really want to risk offending everyone in the room by saying that perhaps this study should not have been done at all, BECAUSE THE OUTCOME OF IT COULD HAVE, TO SOME EXTENT, BEEN PREDICTED [emphasis added]..."
You also cut-and-paste other quotes of Dr. Clements in order to create a new stream of speech that never existed. You wrote, "Dr. John Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization ... warned that the results 'will be taken by others and will be used in ways beyond the control of this group. The research results have to be handled.'"
This joins together two utterances that were actually distinct and separated, and, more perniciously, it also reverses their order of appearance to create the false impression that the second sentence refers to the first. Also, the word "other" is missing in the quote in the article ("used in OTHER ways").
Here's the real quotation from the transcript:
"But there is now the point at which the research results have to be handled [note -- no italics], and even if this committee decides that there is no association and that information gets out, the work has been done and through freedom of information that will be taken by others and will be used in other ways beyond the control of this group."
You may feel that the meaning is unaltered; I feel quite differently. But that's not the point: The question is, why did you feel it necessary to distort the text, rather than letting readers see the unaltered original quotation?
Article, Page 1: "All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly 'embargoed.' There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left."
This statement is terribly misleading. Here is the actual quote from the transcript (Page 256): Dr. Bernier: "I don't think we can set a rule here because some people have gotten these documents. For example, some of the manufacturers were privileged to receive this information. It has been important for them to share it within the company with the experts there, so they can review it. Some of you may have questions. You may have been given a copy, but I think if we all just consider this embargoed information, if I can use that term, and very highly protected information, I think that was the best I can offer. If anyone else wants to make a suggestion, but I would say consider it embargoed and protected until it is made public on June 21 and 22 at the ACIP. There is a plan to do that."
There is no explicit prohibition in this passage against making copies or taking papers from the conference. Most importantly is this statement: " ... consider it embargoed and protected UNTIL IT IS MADE PUBLIC ON JUNE 21 and 22 at the ACIP. There is a plan to do that." That planned public release date was a mere two weeks after the conference. This puts the statements regarding embargoing the information in a radically different light than that implied, whereby the government was attempting to permanently conceal the study.
Article, Page 1: "But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data." This statement is false. A reading of the transcript proves that almost the entire two days of the conference consisted of the presentation of findings, discussion of the study, and discussion of next steps to investigate the issue further. In fact, the consensus was to perform further research and investigation, not to suppress the results and terminate the line of inquiry.
I do not dispute that some unsettling comments were made at the conference, and the greatest irony is that the results that Dr. Verstraeten presents do implicate thimerosal in several childhood neurological developmental disorders -- but not autism. This is tragic, because your flagrant errors will now have the effect of neutralizing some of the very important information that is coming to light on this issue. The issue under examination is of high importance, and you have now donated ammunition to those that would discredit the anti-immunization crowd. In this case, sadly, you may well deserve discrediting.
-- Daniel Kirchheimer
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. replies:
We published the link to the Simpsonwood transcript, along with my article, so that readers could see the discussion for themselves. Mr. Kirchheimer is entitled to his interpretation. I disagree with it.
My piece didn't state that Tom Verstraeten said he'd found "statistically significant" links between autism and thimerosal exposure at Simpsonwood, but that the Simpsonwood meeting was convened to discuss his earlier research, which did find a link. Verstraeten had been studying the Vaccine Safety Datalink database (compiled by health maintenance organizations to track reports of medical complaints, illnesses and other data related to vaccinations) to see whether there was evidence of a connection between exposure to thimerosal in childhood vaccines and a range of neurological disorders, including autism. Six months prior to Simpsonwood, in December 1999, Verstraeten sent his CDC colleagues findings showing a statistically significant association between thimerosal and many of those disorders, including autism. One Verstraeten e-mail alerting his CDC colleagues to his findings contained the now-infamous subject line, "it just won't go away ..." He attached a summary of data sets showing a troubling 7.62-fold increase in the incidence of autism associated with babies' first Hep B shot. Later, in a February 2000 report, Verstraten found that at 3 months, fully vaccinated infants had received 62.5 micrograms of thimerosal, and their relative risk of autism was 2.48 -- which would be considered a statistically significant association if presented in a court of law.
As my article noted, Verstraeten continued to work on the data, pre- and post-Simpsonwood, and over time the link to autism diminished, mainly because Verstraeten added and subtracted different population groups from his study. However, in the paper he presented at Simpsonwood in June 2000, "Risk of neurological and renal impairment associated with Thimerosal-containing vaccines," he found a statistically significant association between exposure to the mercury-based preservative and a host of problems, including "unspecified developmental delay, tics, speech delay, attention-deficit disorder and neurodevelopmental delay in general." He also found a "slight, but not significant increase" in autism in infants exposed to thimerosal, but he did note at Simpsonwood -- on Page 43 of the transcript -- that the data probably understated the true problem, because many of the children considered in the study were "just not old enough to be diagnosed" (autism is typically not diagnosed until age 3 or 4).
To Mr. Kirchheimer's other points: The way I used the Clements quote did not change its meaning. I regret that two sentences of the quote were inadvertently transposed. The papers discussed at Simpsonwood were clearly embargoed - Verstraeten's paper was stamped "Do not copy or reproduce" on every page - and there's no evidence that the material was actually released two weeks later. Again, it's a matter of interpretation how much of the time spent at Simpsonwood was devoted to advancing scientific inquiry and how much to "handling" Verstraeten's troubling data. History has proven the CDC was more interested in making the data "go away" than getting to the bottom of it.
In fact, Verstraeten himself was troubled by the reaction to his work. In an e-mail to Harvard epidemiologist Phillippe Grandjean a month after the Simpsonwood meeting, he complained: "I have witnessed how many experts,looking at this thimerosal issue, do not seem bothered to compare apples to pears and insist that if nothing is happening in these studies then nothing should be feared of thimerosal. I do not wish to be the advocate of the anti-vaccine lobby and sound like being convinced that thimerosal is or was harmful, but at least I feel we should use sound scientific argumentation and not let our standards be dictated by our desire to disprove an unpleasant theory."
I'm happy that my article has contributed to greater public awareness of what transpired at Simpsonwood and afterward, and I hope the CDC will heed the public's call for more transparency.
-- Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
