The organization SafeMinds has recently demanded a long-overdue independent review of vaccine/autism research for data manipulation, scientific misconduct, and conflicts of interest. The demand follows upon the recent indictment on April 13th of Poul Thorsen, the principal coordinator of multiple studies funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that have been used to deny a vaccine/autism link on 13 counts of fraud and nine counts of money- laundering. The charges relate to funding for work he conducted for the CDC, which claimed to disprove associations between the mercury-based vaccine preservative, thimerosal, and increased rates of autism. SafeMinds first voiced concerns in 2003 regarding a series of epidemiology based data from Denmark’s registry for psychiatric research and under the jurisdiction of Thorsen that provided the basis for the Institute of Medicine’s claim that there was no association between thimerosal and autism. That claim has been responsible for the continued questionable use of mercury in influenza vaccines in the United States and infant vaccines around the world. SafeMinds accessed the data registry and reported that a large percentage of diagnosed autism cases are lost from the Danish registry each year and that most of those lost cases were older children. Since the studies were based on finding fewer older thimerosal-exposed children than younger unexposed children, the validity of their conclusion exonerating thimerosal in autism was questionable and likely a result of missing records rather than true lower incidence rates among the exposed group. “The quality of this epidemiological research has always been questionable,” states Sallie Bernard, SafeMinds president. “Many biological studies support a link between mercury and autism, but these Danish studies have been used to suppress further research into thimerosal. With clear evidence of Dr. Thorsen’s lack of ethics, it is imperative to reopen this investigation.” Further background information on these studies, the charges against Dr. Thorsen, and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that support SafeMinds’ concerns are available at, www.safeminds.org.
