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	news bulletins december 2001

• The Green Guide is Back!
• Vaccine Update: Thimerosal
• Stop Hitting Children
• Ibuprofen and Chickenpox: A Dangerous Combination
• Co-Abode: Online Service for Single Moms

Online Resource for Single Moms
www.co-abode.com, a new resource online for single mothers, is the brainchild of Carmel Boss, a painter and educator. Co-abode was born out of Carmel's own experience as a single parent who wanted an excellent situation for herself and her child but none-the-less faced the hard realities of limited resources.

Carmel found that co-living with another compatible single mom made for a better quality of life for both families in a plethora of ways. The pooling of financial resources alleviates a burden that many single moms find insurmountable and emotionally defeating. Two incomes can provide for a better home than one. The sharing of meals, chores, child-play and child-care can be of a higher quality as it allows for the freeing up and nurturing of each mom's limited personal resources. All moms need a night off! Perhaps the greatest benefit of house sharing is the network of social and emotional support it provides moms and children, with all its attendant comforts, securities, solaces and laughs.

www.co-abode.com aims to help members find compatible housemates. It is also a site that offers chat rooms, links to other resources, and help and services for such things as legal advice, women's issues and holistic health issues.

Other Sites for Single Moms:

Making Lemonade at www.makinglemonade.com
Single Momz at www.singlemomz.com
Parents Without Partners at www.parentswithoutpartners.org

"Single Mother" a Newsletter
National Organization of Single Mothers
PO Box 68
Midland, NC
28107-0068

Ibuprofen and Chickpox: A Creepy Combination
A recent Washington State case-controlled study of chickenpox complicated by soft tissue infection, further confirmed a long suspected relationship between the use of ibuprofen, or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and the subsequent development of necrotising fasciitis, a rare and often deadly streptococcal soft tissue infection.

The study found that the 19 children with chickenpox complicated by necrotising fasciitis were five times more likely than the 29 children in the control group to have been treated with ibuprofen prior to hospitalization. Those children with necrotising fasciitis complicated by renal insufficiency and/or streptococcal toxic shock were also more likely to have used ibuprofen. And, children who had been treated with ibuprofen had a longer duration of secondary symptoms prior to hospitalization.

This study, along with those cited below, posit that either the use of NSAIDs masks the symptoms of necrotising fasciitis, thereby discouraging early diagnosis and treatment, and/or, NSAIDs inhibit and impair a crucial biologic response that the body would normally utilize to fight streptococcal infection. Because of this, researchers are calling into question the use of ibuprofen and/or other NSAIDS for treatment of chickenpox and/or soft tissue infections.

How can you treat it? Every parent wants to make his or her child as comfortable as possible and minimize the stay of the illness. Mothering recommends consulting your caregiver as well as referring to: Smart Medicine For A Healthier Child, A Practical A-to-Z Reference To Natural And Conventional Treatments For Infants & Children by Zand, Walton and Rountree. The recommendations for chickenpox spans three pages and include conventional, herbal and homeopathic treatments, as well as offer dietary and nutritional guidelines.

Website for Prescriber Update Article: Necrotising Fasciitis with Non-steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs is: http://www.medsafe.govt.nz/profs/PUarticles/necf.htm

Zerr DM, Alexander ER, Duchin JS, Koutsky LA, Rubens CE. A case-control study of necrotising fasciitis during primary varicella. Pediatrics 1999; 103:783-90

Bernard GR, Wheeler AP, Russell JA, Schein R, et al. The effects of ibuprofen on the physiology and survival of patients and sepsis. N Engl J Med

Stop Hitting Children
Recent survey results show that adults often have inappropriate expectations for children and believe that they can be spoiled. A majority of parents also condone spanking. What Grown-Ups Understand About Child Development: A National Benchmark Study, released in late 2000, measured the child development knowledge of three thousand US adults and parents. The study found that 51 percent of parents inappropriately expect a 15-month-old to be able to share toys. Fifty-seven percent of parents of young children believe incorrectly that a six-month-old can be spoiled. And sixty-one percent of parents condone spanking as a regular form of punishment for young children.

Research shows that spanking is detrimental to a child's development and is ineffective in achieving positive behavior over time. A new global initiative, the Global Initiative to End Corporal Punishment of Children was launched in Geneva, Switzerland on April 10, 2001. Founders include Peter Newell, Coordinator of EPOCH-Worldwide and Thomas Hammarberg, previously Vice-Chair of the Committee on the Rights of the Child and currently Sweden's Ambassador for Humanitarian Affairs.

This initiative seeks to accelerate the end of corporal punishment internationally through education and legal action. To find out more about this effort and what you can do to help, see the website: www.endcorporalpunishment.org

A national effort, SpankOut Day USA was initiated in 1998 to bring widespread attention to the need to end physical punishment of children and to provide caregivers of children with effective alternatives. The Proclamation In Support of SpankOut Day asks people to recognize SpankOut Day, USA, April 30, 2001 by not using corporal punishment of children and by advocating child-rearing practices that help develop caring, responsible, and self-disciplined adults. To learn more or to sign the proclamation, see the website:
www.stophitting.com

Other corporal punishment websites are:
www.nospank.org
www.neverhitachild.org

Vaccine Update: Thimerosal
The Institute of Medicine's Immunization Safety Review Committee recently released its report: Thimerosal Containing Vaccines and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes. In a nutshell, it stated that existing epidemiological evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between exposure to thimerosal from vaccines and the neurodevelopmental disorders of autism, ADHD, and speech or language delay, however, such a relationship is biologically plausible. It was emphasized that government and medical advisory bodies should be supported in their efforts to remove thimerosal from pharmaceuticals and biologics as quickly as possible. The committee also advised that given a choice, parents and doctors should ensure that children receive thimerosal free vaccines (a recent study by the CDC estimates that at least 5% of remaining vaccine stock being administered across the country still contains thimerosal).1 Further research was called for at the population level on occurrences of neurodevelomental disorders before and after thimerosal was removed from vaccines. Dr. Marie McCormick, the committee chair, emphasized that these measures were prudent, precautionary, and done in part, to maintain public trust in vaccine safety.2

While the FDA and EPA called for the removal of mercury in all biologics beginning in 1999, the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has yet to express a preference for thimerosal-free vaccines. The ACIP recommends vaccines that are included on the Childhood Immunization Schedule, and therefore was responsible for approving the additions of Hib and Hep B in the early 1990's, two thimerosal containing vaccines which pushed infant ethyl mercury exposure levels above any existing federal methyl mercury guidelines for adults.

There has been a mounting controversy surrounding a confidential CDC Vaccine Safety Data-Link (VSD) study, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by SAFEMINDS Organization (Sensible Action For Ending Mercury-Induced Neurological Disorders). The CDC study looked at neurodevelopmental injury and cumulative exposures to thimerosal at one and three months of age by studying the health records of over 100,00 children from two California HMO's. A law suit recently filed by the Texas firm, Waters and Kraus, alleges that the confidential version of the VSD study clearly demonstrated "that an exposure to more than 62.5 micrograms of mercury within the first three months of life significantly increased a child's risk of developing neurodevelopmental disorders such as speech and language delay, autism, stuttering, and attention deficit disorder."3 In fact, the study indicated that children at this exposure level were more than twice as likely (2.48) to develop autism as those not exposed. The study also found that for exposures evaluated at one month of age and 12.5 micrograms of mercury (those infants receiving the neonatal hepatitis B vaccine), there was a significant relationship to the outcomes of misery and unhappiness disorder, and attention deficit disorder.4 Tom Verstraeten, the study's author, now employed by GlaxoSmithKlein, a London-Belgium based pharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturer, allegedly stated when presenting the confidential version of the study to a panel of his peers, "one thing that is for sure, there is certainly an under-ascertainment of all these (neurodevelopmental disorders) because some of the children are just not old enough to be diagnosed. So the crude incidence rates are probably much lower than what you would expect because the cohort is still very young."5

Waters and Kraus note, "courts of law have generally upheld that a relative increased risk of 2.0 or higher (children exposed to 62.5mgs of mercury are twice as likely to develop..) is sufficient to substantiate that a given exposure causes disease". Furthermore they allege that the CDC presented a subsequent benign version of this study to the public at the July 15, 2001 National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine (IOM) meeting on Thimerosal Containing Vaccines and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes. 6 The CDC has so far denied repeated requests for any independent party to review the data used for the VSD study.

This allegation flies in the face of The National Academy of Sciences October press release based on that IOM meeting, which stated, ".no evidence currently exists that proves a link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, speech or language delays, or other neurodevelopmental delays."7 It also contradicts Dr. Marie McCormick's claim that, "the hypothesis that thimerosal exposure through the recommended childhood immunization schedule causes neurodevelopmental disorders is not supported by clinical or experimental evidence.".8

How much thimerosal is too much thimerosal for an infant? It depends on whom you ask. The Immunization Safety Review's committee chair, Dr. Marie McCormick, has given assurances that it was the rare instance that a child following the ACIP vaccine schedule exceeded federal guidelines for methyl mercury exposure. Yet the confidential CDC study found that it was the rule and not the exception that infant exposure levels exceeded EPA limits at one and three months of age, by as much as sixty times the safe level.9 And, as researchers were quick to point out at the latest IOM meeting on thimerosal, the EPA's safe limit is based on gradually ingested methyl mercury via fish consumption. It was never meant to be used as a safety limit for injected bolus doses of ethyl mercury, which permeate the blood-brain barrier.

According to Boyd Haley, head of the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky, and an internationally recognized researcher on the toxicity of mercury compounds, no amount of thimerosal is a safe amount. He says, "It is well known that infants do not produce significant levels of bile or have adult renal capacity for several months after birth. Bilary transport is the major biochemical route by which mercury is removed from the body, and infants cannot do this very well."10 Furthermore he adds that thimerosal is more toxic than mercury and that "giving a ten pound infant a single vaccine in a day is the equivalent of giving a 100 pound adult 40 vaccines in a day. It's just stupid and I don't think much of physicians who do this because the vaccine manufacturers told them it was safe." He went on to say, ".we are not talking about causing death, we are talking about causing autism. As a scientist you have to ask yourself, what's the most obvious neurotoxin that these children are being exposed to that could cause this? Thimerosal." 11

How could a mistake of such magnitude, one that has impacted a generation of children around the world, have been made? Jane Orient M.D., executive director of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, has long argued that because vaccines are state and federally mandated the manufacturer and the physician are relieved of the liability for adverse effects. Furthermore, physicians who advise against a mandated vaccine, face increased legal liability if their patient is infected with the disease. Orient says that physicians and health care workers have no impetus to follow up on the safety or rationale of the product they are administering.12

On a public health policy level, Senator Dan Burton's office found in congressional hearings that the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is riddled with conflicts of interest. In reviewing policy decisions that brought about the approval of the ill-fated rotavirus vaccine, Burton found that committee members, including the committee chair, owned stock in drug companies that make vaccines. Committee members also owned patents for vaccines. Conflicts of interest waivers were granted for every member of the committee and there are no voting members of the public or parents on the committee.13

And at the July IOM meeting, vaccinologist Dr. Neal Halsey of John Hopkins University, explained the research oversight, "why those of us involved in vaccines missed this I think was primarily because the package labeling includes Thimerosal at a concentration of .01 percent, which in my mind and many other people's minds, this is a trace, trivial, insignificant amount. But the guidelines for mercury exposure, which I did have some familiarity (with) were in micrograms of mercury. That discrepancy contributed to some of the problem."14

The damage having been done, the problems the CDC faces now were probably best summed up by Dr. Brent at the Simpsonwood Meeting where Dr. Tom Verstraeten first presented his confidential VSD study to a panel of his peers. Dr. Brent said, " .the medical and legal findings in this study, causal or not, are horrendous and therefore, it is important that suggested epidemiological, pharmokinetic, and animal studies be performed. If an allegation was made that a child's neurobehavioral findings were caused by thimerosal vaccines, you could readily find a junk scientist who would support the claim with a "reasonable degree of certainty." But you would not find a scientist with any integrity who would say the reverse with the data that is available. And that is true. So we are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits if they were initiated and I am concerned."15

Waters and Kraus has filed the first known civil suit to allege that thimerosal exposures from vaccines led to neurological damage resulting in the diagnosis of autism in an infant. They are now leading a consortium of ten law firms across as many states, in similar suits. Head attorney Andy Waters aims to "bring to the surface the truth on this issue, a truth government agencies seem unwilling to admit, perhaps for fear that parents will stop vaccinating their children, and to force companies that profited from this disastrous mistake to shoulder the responsibility that so many families now bear on their own, often without even the aid of health insurance benefits."

1. www.feat.org archives, Daily Newsletter, October 2001 #28
2. www.iom.edu/IOM/IOMHome.ndf/Pages/Thimerosal+Opening+Statement and http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309076366/html/65.html
3. http://vaccineinfo.net/autismHg.htm and www.autismfraud.com; CDC Thimerosal VSD Study, 2/29/00, By Thomas Verstraeten, Robert Davis, Frank DeStefano; Simpsonwood Meeting June 7th, 2000, Waters and Kraus: Media Inquiries to Melissa Miles: 214-357-6244
4. Ibid
5. Ibid
6. Ibid
7. http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/ isbn/0309076366?OpenDocument
8. http://www.iom.edu.IOM/IOMhome.nsf/ Pages/Thimerosal+Opening+Statement
9. http://www.mercola.com/2001/oct/31/mercury_lawsuit.htm; CDC Thimerosal VSD Study, 2/29/00, By Thomas Verstraeten, Robert Davis, Frank DeStefano
10. www.altcorp.com/haleyresponds.htm
11. Conversation w/Boyd Haley and Mothering Magazine October 2001
12. http://www.altcorp.com/toddlerrisk.htm
13. http://www.safeminds.org/burtsp.htm
14. IOM Immunization Safety Review Committee Meeting on Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes, Charles Hotel, Cambridge Mass July 15, 2001
15. http://vaccineinfo.net/autismHg.htm and www.autismfraud.com; CDC Thimerosal VSD Study, 2/29/00, By Thomas Verstraeten, Robert Davis, Frank DeStefano; Simpsonwood Meeting June 7th, 2000, Waters and Kraus: Media Inquiries to Melissa Miles: 214-357-6244

The Green Guide is Back!
Since the reorganization of Mothers And Others during the last year, we've missed the environmental wisdom of The Green Guide. Winner of several alternative press awards, The Green Guide, is the publication we turn to most at Mothering for reliable information on the environment. Under the auspices of The Green Guide Institute. The GreenGuide, is once again published bi-monthly and is available by subscription.
PO Box 129, Sea Cliff, NY 11579
www.thegreenguide.com