Yes, thank you, Mr. Moody.

My comment today at the ACCV meeting:
Jim Moody, National Autism Association, thank you for the opportunity to provide comment. It has recently come to my attention that the Government specificaly asked the IOM NOT to review the scientific literature relating to mercury and report its findings in the adverse reactions report filed last August. This explains the glaring gap in the report and the limitation in the “autism” section to only a discussion of MMR.

This is an obviously improper censhorship of scientific inquiry especially since the directive was not disclosed in the contract, to this Commission or in the IOM report. Indeed, IOM specificaly listed a massive amount of the Hg literature in its bibliography and specifically called for an inquiry into the causes of “secondary” autism, making the absence of analysis all the more suspect. As you know the Program has been compensating dozens of autism casses since 1990 when the injuries are “severe” or “immediate,” but what remains unknown is how many children are similarly injured but uncompensated, and the precise mechanism of action. The masters have specifically left open the question of mercury causation in the ongoing autism proceedings. A massive amount of epidemiology and mechanisms literature has been published during the past five years that continue to implicate Hg as a cause of autism.

It is obviously unethical for a party to litigation to quietly censor inquiry and report by IOM as the independent “expert” designated by Congress and paid for by the Fund while at the same time demand the expedited dismissal of the autism cases. This has prevented the petitioners, their counsel, and Masters from having the benefit of an IOM analysis. This failure is especially significant to the autism inquiry because the new Report disavowed reliance on most of the literature exonerating MMR as unreliable as well as detailing how much we really don’t know, and still need to know, about adverse reactions to vaccines, including epidemiology, genetic susceptability, and mechanism. Moreover such back-room but blatant censorship calls into question the statutory role of this Commission in properly advising the Program. Why is this Commission here, if not to ensure that every person with a potential vaccine injury gets a fair hearing with unbiased scientific evidence with truly independent expertise from the IOM. Decisions must be based on evidence and on the informed opinion of independent experts, and not based on haste or deliberate ignorance. Why the secrecy? Why was the Commission and the public kept in the dark on an issue of such obvious and long-standing public concern? No doubt there are many in the Government who fear that “too much” compensation will jeopardize public confidence in the safety, albeit unproven, of vaccines, at the expense of the Congressional policy to compensate all who suffer vaccine injuries, veterans in the war against disease.

It is absolutely imperative that ACCV act immediately to declare a moratorium on further dismissals of autism cases, for all the reasons I’ve previously offered, basically relating to developing science and to necessary data on autism rates among unvaccinated children for comparison purposes, but now, and most urgently, until the Report can be remanded to IOM with instructions to compelte its review of the scientific literature relating to Hg, or any other censored areas, and revise its report