A man named Walter Orenstein did a study using data from the VSD to see whether mercury levels affected neurological problems in children. After his first pass through the data, he concluded that it had. With the exception of autism, children who had recieved mercury in vaccines were more likely to have a variety of neurological problems. When the CDC was presented with that information, they held a meeting in Simpsonwood to investigate it and change the vax schedule, if needed.
One potential problem with that initial study was that perhaps the kids who got vaccinated regularly were just more likely to see the doctor. So the kids who weren't vaxed, and were less likely to see a doctor, were potentially suffering at the same rate, but had never been diagnosed. Another potential problem was that the data in the VSD might not match the actual medical records that they represent. Sometimes doctors will diagnose someone with one thing on their medical charts, but code it as something else. It could be because of human error, insurance purposes, etc. They investigated this and discovered that there was, indeed, significant discrepencies. For example, one of the researchers stated, "If attention deficit disorder is coded you only have a 31% chance of finding a confirmed diagnosis of it in the medical record." They realized that the data of the VSD could not be trusted and in order to get accurate numbers they'd need to see every single medical record of the children reported. This would be painstaking and time-consuming. But it was important, so that's what they did.
Their conclusions were that the preliminary data had been misleading. Mercury in vaccines did not cause harm. They wrote that "no consistent significant associations were found between thimerosal-containing vaccines and neurodevelopmental outcomes." So the summit at Simpsonwood that you feel so strongly was a cover-up focused on harming children, was actually doctors making sure that our kids were being kept safe.
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