Excerpt: Twenty international scientists have signed an unprecedented memorandum supporting the controversial findings of suppressed research which found that rats fed on genetically modified potatoes suffered a weakened immune system and damage to vital organs. In a report published for the first time today, the scientists from 13 countries also demand the immediate professional rehabilitation of the British scientist, Dr Arpad Pusztai, who discovered these preliminary findings last year and was forced to retire after speaking out about his concerns.

“Dr Pusztai’s pioneering research into the effects of GM crops on animal nutrition and the environment included feeding genetically modified (GM) potatoes to rats to determine for the first time whether they had any harmful effects on their guts, bodies, metabolism and immune system.

“The unexpected results of the pounds 1.6 million Scottish Office-funded research project showed that after 10 days of feeding trials the development of the kidney, thymus, spleen and gut were adversely affected. The research also showed the rats’ immune systems were weakened.

“The Guardian can also reveal that the rats’ brain size decreased. Dr Pusztai did not publish this at the time because he judged the political repercussions would be too severe.

“A more recent piece of research on the same rats by senior pathologist, Dr Stanley Ewen, of Aberdeen University Medical School, is understood to validate Dr Pusztai’s preliminary findings and points towards new potential health risks.

“Dr Ewen found that rats fed the GM potatoes used in Dr Pusztai’s experiments suffered from an enlarged stomach wall after 10 days of feeding trials.

Excerpt: [Dr Pusztai] said he would not eat GM potatoes and found it very unfair to use our fellow citizens as guinea pigs.

“Some of the scientists who have viewed the evidence believe that the circumstances surrounding Dr Pusztai’s removal and the closing down of his research team cannot be understood outside of political and commercial parameters.

Excerpt: Phthalates have the ability to disrupt hormones, and have been banned in toys in the EU for some years.

“However, they are still widely used in many different household items, including plastic furniture and packaging.

“There are many different types and some mimic the female hormone oestrogen.

“The same researchers have already shown that this can mean boys are born with genital abnormalities.

Excerpt: We now know that phthalates, to which we are all constantly exposed, are extremely worrying from a health perspective, leading to disruption of male reproduction health and, it appears, male behaviour too.

Excerpt: She acknowledged that the boys who have been studied were still young, but she said reduced masculine play at this age might lead to other feminised developments in later life.

Excerpt: DBP has been banned from use in cosmetics, such as nail varnish, since 2005 in the EU.

Excerpt: Your body is probably home to a chemical called bisphenol A, or BPA. It’s a synthetic estrogen that United States factories now use in everything from plastics to epoxies — to the tune of six pounds per American per year. That’s a lot of estrogen.

“More than 92 percent of Americans have BPA in their urine, and scientists have linked it — though not conclusively — to everything from breast cancer to obesity, from attention deficit disorder to genital abnormalities in boys and girls alike.

“Now it turns out it’s in our food.

“Consumer Reports magazine tested an array of brand-name canned foods for a report in its December issue and found BPA in almost all of them.

Excerpt: The magazine also says it found BPA in the canned liquid version of Similac Advance infant formula…

Excerpt: But more than 200 other studies have shown links between low doses of BPA and adverse health effects, according to the Breast Cancer Fund, which is trying to ban the chemical from food and beverage containers.

Excerpt: Published journal articles have found that BPA given to pregnant rats or mice can cause malformed genitals in their offspring, as well as reduced sperm count among males … and lower testicular weight.

“This year, the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found that pregnant mice exposed to BPA had babies with abnormalities in the cervix, uterus and vagina. Reproductive Toxicology found that even low-level exposure to BPA led to the mouse equivalent of early puberty for females. And an array of animal studies link prenatal BPA exposure to breast cancer and prostate cancer.

“…humans with higher levels of BPA in their blood have an increased prevalence of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and liver-enzyme abnormalities. Another published study found that women with higher levels of BPA in their blood had more miscarriages.

“Scholars have noted some increasing reports of boys born with malformed genitals, girls who begin puberty at age 6 or 8 or even earlier, breast cancer in women and men alike, and declining sperm counts among men.

Excerpt: So let’s talk about some of the examples: New York, traces of sedatives; Philadelphia, fifty-six drugs in the water; Denver, unspecified antibiotics; Las Vegas, I don’t think I can even pronounce all of these drugs; Long Beach, California, unspecified drugs; Louisville, Kentucky, ibuprofen; Milwaukee, one drug; Minneapolis, three.

Excerpt: There are—one of the most common ones, Carbamazepine, is used as a mood stabilizer and an anti-epileptic medication as well. And Carbamazepine is found all over the country in these trace amounts.

Excerpt: In San Francisco, you write that there’s a sex hormone, what is it, Estrone in the water.

Excerpt: [T]here are certain kinds of cancer that are prone to estrogen, and there is some concern that these kinds of pharmaceuticals, even in trace amounts, could possibly contribute to cancer. And even as we begin to talk a little bit about what the risk is, what the human risk is, there’s even a little bit of research in human cells with these drugs at very, very low amounts, so the kind that are found in the environment, actually accelerating the growth of human cancer cells.

Excerpt: There are no national standards. In fact, the water utilities we surveyed aren’t required to even test for them, much less to treat them.

Excerpt: The risk isn’t very well understood yet, though we reported, probably for the first time, a body of emerging science that suggest that these low amounts could be a danger to people in the sense that they apparently can cause bad things to happen in human cells.

Excerpt: Congress held hearings in 2006 on endocrine-disrupting compounds after researchers discovered that the Potomac River, dotted with sewage treatment plants, contains feminized male bass which create egg yolk proteins, a process usually restricted to females.

Excerpt: [T]wo-thirds of US cities and towns fluoridate water…

“Yet, controversy and doubts about its safety have dogged fluoride ever since the first US city, Grand Rapids, MI, began adding it to its water supply in 1945.

Excerpt: Fluoridation should be abandoned, says dentist Hardy Limeback, PhD, DDS, head of preventive dentistry at the University of Toronto… It could turn out to be one of the top 10 mistakes of the 21st century.

Excerpt: For starters, read the label on a tube of toothpaste: Keep out of reach of children under 6 years of age. If more than is used for brushing is accidentally swallowed, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away.

“Poison? Indeed, some forms of fluoride are used in high concentrations to kill rats and crop-eating insects. Municipal employees who add fluoridation chemicals to public water systems must wear protective clothing and respirators. Industrial workers regularly exposed to fluorine, the gas form of fluoride, have suffered skin, lung, and gastrointestinal problems; it has even been fatal for some.

Excerpt: [The National Research Council] panel determined that about 10% of kids living in communities where the drinking water is close to the EPA upper limit of safe exposure, 4 mg/L, develop severe dental fluorosis; that means not only yellow and brown stains on their teeth but also pits in their enamel, increasing the risk of cavities. Rates of dental fluorosis appear to be on the rise--the CDC says the percentage of Americans between ages 6 and 19 with fluorosis jumped from 23% in the late 1980s to 32% today.

Excerpt: Several studies from China have found a persistent link between high levels of fluoride and IQ deficits in children. In one study, children in a town with about 2.5 mg/L of fluoride in the water tested 8 points lower on average than children in a village whose water had just trace amounts of it.

Excerpt: Even the CDC's recommended target of 1 mg/L of fluoride may increase the danger of bone ills: In 1992, researchers from the University of Utah reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that elderly men were 41% more likely to fracture a hip if they lived in a community where the water contained that amount than if they lived in areas with lower levels; women's risk increased by 27%. … You are imposing risk on all individuals who use a public water system…

“The Harvard fluoride study from earlier this year provides yet another reason to question the safety of the 1mg/L standard. Researchers compared 103 people who were diagnosed before age 20 with a rare kind of bone cancer called osteosarcoma with a similar group of people who did not have the disease.

“They discovered that young boys who grew up drinking water containing at least 0.7 mg/L of fluoride were up to 5 1/2 times more likely to develop osteosarcoma than boys whose drinking water contained less. … Even water with a moderate concentration of fluoride (0.3 to 0.69 mg/L) appeared to boost risk in boys more than threefold.

Excerpt: A warning that the new swine flu jab [shot] is linked to a deadly nerve disease has been sent by the Government to senior neurologists in a confidential letter.

Excerpt: It tells the neurologists that they must be alert for an increase in a brain disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), which could be triggered by the vaccine.

“GBS attacks the lining of the nerves, causing paralysis and inability to breathe, and can be fatal.

“The letter, sent to about 600 neurologists on July 29, is the first sign that there is concern at the highest levels that the vaccine itself could cause serious complications.

“It refers to the use of a similar swine flu vaccine in the United States in 1976 when:

• More people died from the vaccination than from swine flu.
• 500 cases of GBS were detected.
• The vaccine may have increased the risk of contracting GBS by eight times.

Excerpt: A mass vaccination was given the go-ahead by President Gerald Ford…

“Within days, symptoms of GBS were reported among those who had been immunised and 25 people died from respiratory failure after severe paralysis. … In contrast, just one person died of swine flu.

“More than 40million Americans had received the vaccine by the time the programme was stopped after ten weeks.

Excerpt: But it could end up being anything because one of the additives in one of the vaccines is a substance called squalene, and none of the studies we’ve extracted have any research on it at all.

Excerpt: What we’ve got is a massive guinea-pig trial.

Excerpt: [I]n most cases this is a mild virus [swine flu] which needs a few days in bed.

Excerpt: 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. I was actually stunned by what I saw, Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.

Excerpt: The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to rule out the chemical's link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been lost and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers.

Excerpt: The CDC and FDA gave them a hand, buying up the tainted vaccines for export to developing countries and allowing drug companies to continue using the preservative in some American vaccines -- including several pediatric flu shots as well as tetanus boosters routinely given to 11-year-olds.

Excerpt: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by the parents of injured children. On five separate occasions, Frist has tried to seal all of the government's vaccine-related documents -- including the Simpsonwood transcripts -- and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of thimerosal, from subpoenas. In 2002…Frist quietly slipped a rider known as the Eli Lilly Protection Act into a homeland security bill…

Excerpt: The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have symptoms of neurological or immune-system damage, Patti White, a school nurse, told the House Government Reform Committee in 1999. Vaccines are supposed to be making us healthier; however, in 25 years of nursing I have never seen so many damaged, sick kids. Something very, very wrong is happening to our children. More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism, and pediatricians diagnose more than 40,000 new cases every year. The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among 11 children born in the months after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931.

Excerpt: Other researchers point out that Americans are exposed to a greater cumulative load of mercury than ever before, from contaminated fish to dental fillings, and suggest that thimerosal in vaccines may be only part of a much larger problem.

Excerpt: From the very beginning, the scientific case against the mercury additive has been overwhelming. The preservative…contains ethylmercury, a potent neurotoxin. Truckloads of studies have shown that mercury tends to accumulate in the brains of primates and other animals after they are injected with vaccines -- and that the developing brains of infants are particularly susceptible. In 1977, a Russian study found that adults exposed to much lower concentrations of ethylmercury than those given to American children still suffered brain damage years later.

Excerpt: You couldn't even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe, says Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. It's just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a petri dish, the culture dies.

Excerpt: In 1930, the company [Eli Lilly] tested thimerosal by administering it to 22 patients with terminal meningitis, all of whom died within weeks of being injected…

Excerpt: In 1967, a study in Applied Microbiology found that thimerosal killed mice when added to injected vaccines. Four years later, Lilly's own studies discerned that thimerosal was toxic to tissue cells in concentrations as low as one part per million -- 100 times weaker than the concentration in a typical vaccine. Even so, the company continued to promote thimerosal as nontoxic and also incorporated it into topical disinfectants. In 1977, 10 babies at a Toronto hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with thimerosal was dabbed onto their umbilical cords.

Excerpt: …the CDC recommended that infants be injected with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for hepatitis B within 24 hours of birth, and 2-month-old infants would be immunized for haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.

Excerpt: …the industry knew of nontoxic alternatives.

Excerpt: Before 1989, American preschoolers received 11 vaccinations… A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of 22 immunizations by the time they reached first grade.

“As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children exploded. During the 1990s, 40 million children were injected with thimerosal-based vaccines, receiving unprecedented levels of mercury during a period critical for brain development.

Excerpt: Infants who received all their vaccines, plus boosters, by the age of six months were being injected with a total of 187 micrograms of ethylmercury… Under the expanded schedule of vaccinations, multiple shots were often administered on a single day: At two months, when the infant brain is still at a critical stage of development, children routinely received three innoculations that delivered 99 times the approved limit of mercury.

Excerpt: Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted calculated that there should be 130 autistics among the Amish. He found only four. One had been exposed to high levels of mercury from a power plant. The other three -- including one child adopted from outside the Amish community -- had received their vaccines.

Excerpt: …Iowa's 700 percent increase in autism began in the 1990s, right after more and more vaccines were added to the children's vaccine schedules…

Excerpt: the FDA continues to allow manufacturers to include thimerosal in scores of over-the-counter medications as well as steroids and injected collagen. Even more alarming, the government continues to ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries -- some of which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China, where the disease was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of thimerosal by U.S. drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that there are now more than 1.8 million autistics. Although reliable numbers are hard to come by, autistic disorders also appear to be soaring in India, Argentina, Nicaragua and other developing countries that are now using thimerosal-laced vaccines. The World Health Organization continues to insist thimerosal is safe…

Excerpt: The damage caused by vaccine exposure is massive. It's bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything you've ever seen.

Excerpt: The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses.

Excerpt: The contamination incident, which is being investigated by the four European countries, came to light when the subcontractor in the Czech Republic inoculated ferrets with the product and they died.

Excerpt: People familiar with biosecurity rules are dismayed by evidence that human H3N2 and avian H5N1 viruses somehow co-mingled in the Orth-Donau facility.

Excerpt: While H5N1 doesn't easily infect people, H3N2 viruses do. If someone exposed to a mixture of the two had been simultaneously infected with both strains, he or she could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people.

“That mixing process, called reassortment, is one of two ways pandemic viruses are created.

Excerpt: Baxter hasn't shed much light…on how the accident happened.