So Much for Bill Frist

Imagine how sleazy the Republicans must be if their most "squeaky-clean" presidential possibility for 2008 is Senator Bill Frist, said to be GWB's first choice to succeed him, assuming his brother Jeb doesn't change his mind.

Frist, who’s the Majority Leader, and a medical doctor, has received almost a million dollars from the pharmaceutical industry. Nothing necessarily wrong with that under the current rules which allow for such things, but are the pharmas getting their money’s worth? If one examines the evidence, one would have to conclude that it is money well invested.

Bill Frist has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect the drug industry, in particular Eli Lilly, from the legal repercussions of their mercury-tainted vaccines, which have, it seems, created an autism epidemic in the U.S.

Eli Lilly knew that thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative in their vaccines, constituted a hazard for neurological disorders, especially for the very young, but continued to manufacture and distribute them anyway, as it allowed them to make multiple-dose vials, thus doubling their profits.

Now, a staggering one in six children who received these vaccines -- between 1989 and 2003 -- are suffering from some form of neurological disability, from ADD to autism. And this doesn't count the formerly bright students who seemed to mysteriously lose their sharp learning focus after a round of vaccinations. Of note is the fact that pre-kindergarten immunizations went from 3 in 1987 to a whopping 22 in the early nineties -- most of them containing the mercury additive, which settles in the brain and disrupts mental functions.

The use of thimerosal was stopped (in domestic vaccination vials) in 2003, but the statistics are stark and shocking. Between 1987 and 2003, the incidence of autism exploded to a rate 15 times what it had been. Not doubled, not quadrupled -- rose by 1500%!!! Apparently, all the doses containing the mercury preservative (including three shots for babies right after birth), has overloaded the still-vulnerable brain tissue of these children.

One of the proofs turned up by researchers that it's the thimerosal-containing vaccinations doing all this and not just environmental mercury (which is undoubtedly an added factor, in the sense that it pushes the overload even higher) is that, in a review of the Lancaster County Amish, who rarely get vaccinated, only 4 cases of autism turned up in the affected age group, instead of the 1500 which similarly-sized neighboring populations had. And three of those kids had been vaccinated!!

More on Frist: In 2002, the day after he quietly slipped a rider into a Homeland Security (!) bill that indemnified Eli Lilly from lawsuits related to this monstrously criminal business practice, they wrote him an additional "campaign contribution" of $10,000 and bought 5,000 of his books. That measure was later repealed, but Mr. You-Can-Poison-The-Children-As-Long-As-You-Pay-Me was not to be denied. Earlier this year, he successfully slipped a new provision, this time into an anti-terrorism bill, which would deny monetary compensation to the devastated families whose children have been ruined by these vaccinations. (By the way, on the House side, it's been none other that Tom Delay leading the way in this protection racket.)

In addition to these dutiful actions, Mr. Bought-And-Paid-For has also used the power of his office to seal many records related to this unconscionable tragedy, shielding them from any and all who want to discover the truth behind this soon-to-be major scandal. The powers-that-be (can you say "trillion-dollar-industry"?) are marshaling their defenses in a massive cover-up and misinformation campaign, including the proclamation that "studies" have shown no increase in autism after thimerosal-containing injections, but this attempt at deception is based on Europeans, who took less than one-third the amount their American counterparts were subjected to.

I’m aware of all this because, having just returned from an additional business trip to London (the garment button business is a fast-paced, vicious world), the people there, besides talking about the terrorist attacks on commuters and the war in Iraq — and, OK, the royals — were talking about this very subject, which has been getting some media play of late. They were shocked at how the U.S. governmental agencies were bought off by the big pharmas (they’ve long since banned thimerosal, as have many other nations) and how not only has a whole generation of American children been virtually poisoned for the ruthless cause of increased profits, but how we’re exporting this stuff to a number of other countries, including China and India. China suddenly has two million kids with autism in only five years of using the mercury-laced vaccines. (In 1999, autism was unknown there!)

A big part of this burgeoning scandal is how the approvals came about, and how the individuals who were charged with overseeing the science, and protecting the people — in this case children — from dangerous injections were themselves mostly on the payroll of at least one pharmaceutical company. And this is not an isolated case. The FDA, Center for Disease Control, the Institute of Medicine, and various drug review panels, are all awash in the slime of industry money, and go along with most every product the filthy-rich pharmas want to foist on an unsuspecting American public.

What’s also amazing -- and instructive -- about this is how, with a few exceptions like Imus in the Morning and Rolling Stone (which published RFK Jr.’s tremendous piece on the matter) the American mainstream media has avoided the subject, beholden as they are to advertising dollars from the drug industry. But what everyone will soon realize is that this horrible travesty, when it blows, will dwarf every other medical scandal in U.S. history, even asbestos and tobacco. And then the wrath of a nation will fall on the guilty, and people like Bill Frist will have scorched craters where their promising careers once stood.

Conversely, if Hillary is half as smart as she thinks she is, she'll ride the mercury poisoning "What-have-they-done-to-our-children?" investigation all the way back to her former lodgings at the end of Pennsylvania Ave.

When all this is finally brought out into the open, it will help people realize what kind of loathsome, conscienceless forces have commandeered this country during the past five years. And, hopefully, when the Democrats return to power in 2008, Congressional hearings on a multitude of anti-people travesties will ensue, centering on other tainted FDA approvals, starting with the dangerous sweetener aspartame, on the allowing of environmental mercury pollution, on secret agreements this venal administration has made with the polluters in general, and energy companies in particular, and on the tobacco industry deal -- a reduction by Justice Department fiat of a $130 billion penalty (for, uh, killing millions of people) to a wristslap $10 billion, which for the cigarette industry is mere ashtray money.

Notes: The most comprehensive work on this subject can be found in top investigative journalist (UPI, NBC, New York Times, etc.) David Kirby’s book, Evidence of Harm. RFK Jr’s essay can also be read at salon.com. Another excellent source of information on thimerosal (and aspartame) can be found at onlinejournal.com, by Evelyn Pringle, under the Health section.