Sandra Finley

2004-04 Mercury Toxicity: Clinical Presentations in Musculoskeletal Medicine

 Mercury poisoning, dental amalgams. See also Vaccinations., Vaccinations (incl corruption of science & govt)  No Responses »
Apr 012004
 

This presentation has some good information on mercury poisoning, but focuses on fish.  I have to put a link in here to the studies that show that a person with mercury fillings will get many times more mercury from the fillings (depending on the number) than they will get from fish they eat.

 

http://www.orthosupersite.com/view.aspx?rid=1905

BUSINESS OF ORTHOPEDICS

ORTHOPEDICS April 2004;27(4):394.

Mercury Toxicity: Clinical Presentations in Musculoskeletal Medicine

by Deborah Saint-Phard, MD; Brent Van Dorsten, MD

 

Recently, worldwide media attention has focused on the effects of mercury pollution on the environment, and the resultant health consequences in pregnant women, fetuses, and children.1 Mercury occurs naturally in the environment and is a recognized neurotoxin at high doses.2 It cannot be broken down, thus making it one of the elements of the periodic table. Mercury naturally cycles through the natural environment beginning with concentrations in the earth’s crust, emanating into the air via coal-fired power stations, industrial incinerators, or natural phenomena such as volcanoes,3 and returning to soil, water, or living organisms.

Humans are exposed to mercury via several mediums including dietary intake (eg, fish consumption), dental amalgams, household agents (eg, mercury thermometers), and occupational exposure (eg, mercury in mining, dental, and pulmonary laboratories).4-6 Mercury is an effective preservative and has been used in cosmetic products, vaccines, pesticides, and fungicides.7

One incident of widespread mercury poisoning occurred in Iraq in 1956 when the population had high dietary intake of seed grains contaminated with mercury-containing fungicides. This exposure resulted in an epidemic of neurological diseases and fatalities.8 Another notable outbreak occurred in Minimata Bay, Japan in 1956 when mercury-laden pollutants from paper mills contaminated waters containing the local populations’ fish supply.9 Severe neurological disease, birth defects, and many fatalities ensued. Hunter-Russell syndrome is the diagnostic label applied to the posthumous effects of methylmercury inhalation and poisoning and includes neuronal destruction and cerebral atrophy with cortical loss.9,10 Brain damage precipitating mental retardation and developmental disturbances, hypertension, and liver and metabolic insufficiencies were noted in those children of mothers exposed to contaminated fish. Children exposed in utero exhibited neurologic symptoms including chorea, ataxia, tremors, and seizures.11

Aside from these large-scale incidents of mercury exposures, patients presenting with more subtle symptoms suggestive of mercury toxicity need to be recognized in the ambulatory care setting. Often the pattern of exposure to mercury—high level, acute exposure versus low level, chronic exposure—can influence the severity of presenting symptoms. The most common clinical presentations of mercury toxicity include paresthesias, ataxia, and visual effects.12-14 Differential diagnostic considerations in orthopedic practice for nontraumatic paresthesias include carpal tunnel syndrome, cervical radiculopathy, or a peripheral neuropathy secondary to diabetes, hypothyroidism, or alcoholism.

Increasingly, health-conscious people are increasing dietary intake of fish over red meats as available ecological data suggest that fish is cardioprotective, leaner, and lower in calories.15,16 In large quantities, however, the increasing possibility of high mercury content in fish may have unanticipated consequences for the consumer. Presentation of nontraumatic clinical symptoms such as paresthesias, combined with a known abundant consumption of fish, should prompt clinical consideration and investigation of mercury toxicity in an ambulatory care setting.

This article discusses:

  1. the prevalence of mercury in the natural environment;
  2. pharmacology of inorganic and organic mercury;
  3. relevant research findings;
  4. clinical presentation and treatment of methylmercury toxicity;
  5. recommendations for safe consumption of fish.

Distribution of Mercury in the Environment

Mercury is an ubiquitous substance that is readily distributed in the environment from a variety natural sources and human activity, and cannot be destroyed. The three types of mercury are elemental, inorganic, and organic. Elemental and inorganic mercury are found mostly in the atmosphere, whereas different types of inorganic and organic mercury are found in water, soil, plants, and animals. Methylmercury, the organic compound that accumulates in human tissue as a result of dietary fish consumption, is the focus of this article.17

Along with the aforementioned sources, mercury is also used in industry in the manufacturing of batteries, latex paint, urethane, and polyvinyl chloride.18 The primary source of environmental pollution is via solid waste incinerators and fossil fuel emissions, the latter of which constitutes 87% of mercury emissions in the United States. Mercury emitted from factories commonly recycles back into soil and water, leading to varying degrees of contamination. Bacteria in water methylate the mercury and convert it from its inorganic to organic form, methylmercury. In adult fish, 90%-100% of the mercury is methylmercury.17

Methylmercury enters the aquatic food chain after small fish and shellfish consume this product and, in turn, transfer to larger fish via predation. Mercury bioaccumulates in the muscle tissue of larger predatory and longer-lived fish, and large fish such as pike, bass, tilefish, king mackerel, shark, large tuna, and swordfish contain the highest amounts of methylmercury.19 These fish can bioaccumulate methylmercury up to ten million times greater than the dissolved methylmercury concentrations in surrounding waters.17 Therefore, frequent consumption of these fish can result in exposure to high levels of methylmercury.

Forms of Mercury

To justify the rationale for ordering clinical laboratory tests, providers should be familiar with the different forms of mercury, routes of exposure, and how the body clears the substance. Elemental mercury (Hg0) is a liquid at room temperature, and readily vaporizes. This form of mercury causes damage to the lungs when inhaled, and easily passes through the blood to the brain. Inhalation following spills of this metal on carpets is a common form of pediatric exposure resulting in poisoning.20 Swallowing elemental mercury may cause gastrointestinal injury.18 Elemental mercury can be found in mercury switches, thermostats, barometers, and thermometers, and people employed in dental and pulmonary laboratories that use mercury might be at increased risk for occupational exposure.

Clinically, exposed patients might exhibit any of a hierarchical series of symptoms beginning with an initial flu-like syndrome. During the following weeks, symptoms may progress to include involvement of the urologic, respiratory, or central nervous systems. Tertiary or advanced symptoms might include neuropsychiatric complaints including memory loss, irritability, excitability, depression, or drowsiness. This constellation of neuropsychiatric symptoms is also referred to as “erythism.”18 The half-life of elemental mercury is approximately 60 days with renal excretion, and prolonged concentration in the kidneys can lead to renal failure. For detecting elemental mercury toxicity, 24-hour urine tests are most accurate, with normal levels rarely >15 µg/L.20

Inorganic mercury (Hg2+) that has been ingested is corrosive and commonly causes gingivitis, burning tongue, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and esophageal erosions. Inorganic mercury exposure occurs primarily from ingestion of pesticides, antiseptics, and germicides.21 Inorganic mercury is readily absorbed by the gut with renal excretion. Neurologically, toxicity may result in dementia, tremor, and ultimate renal failure.20 The presence of mercury in dental amalgams continues to be a source of controversy regarding its clinical significance, with many professionals adopting the position that insufficient evidence exists to support that deleterious health effects can be traced specifically to amalgam.22 Epidemiological studies in Sweden found no significant effects on the renal or immune systems in adults. 23 Ongoing concern regarding the potential adverse affect of amalgam on younger populations has prompted prospective clinical trials for further information.

Organic mercury (Hg+CH3) when exposed to humans leads to profound, high-dose toxicity resulting in neurological loss including paresthesias, ataxia, spasms, deafness, cognitive deterioration, and eventually coma. The ethyl- and methylmercury compounds yield the greatest damage in the fetus in utero as they cross the placental barrier and may be more neurotoxic to the fetus than to the mother. Most methylmercury exposure to humans is from fish consumption. Consequently, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends that pregnant women and young children restrict their consumption to ?10 g per day of fish with mercury concentrations estimated to be 0.1 and 0.15 ppm (Table).

Accurately establishing limits in methylmercury exposure via dietary intake is a less than perfect endeavor. Even if eaten in a moderate recommended quantity, a pregnant woman might readily accumulate concentrations above the recommended reference dose of 1×10-4 mg/kg-d17 by selecting fish with higher estimated mercury concentrations (eg, pike, swordfish, or king macheral with an estimated 0.5 ppm). Prospective naturalistic observation studies are currently being conducted in the Seychelles Islands to further assess the in-utero effects of maternal consumption of methylmercury from fish.24 Davidson et al24 have preliminarily reported minimal effect on neurological development in children followed prospectively over 66 months.

Methylmercury is concentrated in red blood cells, and undergoes biliary excretion and enterohepatic recirculation with 90% eventually being excreted in the feces. As such, elevated blood levels would be considered strongly suggestive of methylmercury exposure associated with fish consumption.2 Urinary levels of mercury would not be expected to reflect total body burden of methylmercury because this form is not primarily excreted by the kidneys.

Table
Relative Mercury Levels in Fish
Parts per million (ppm) Types of Fish
<0.15
Shellfish Clams, crabs, scallops, shrimp, squid, and octopus
Finfish Anchovy, cod, Atlantic croaker, flounder, haddock, hake, herring, kingfish, some mackerel species (chub, Atlantic, jack), perch, Pollock, pompano, salmon, scup, smelt, whitefish (but not ocean whitefish), sole, whiting, turbot, sardines, and tilapia
0.5-1.0 Striped bass, grouper, Spanish mackerel, Northern pike, snook, and porgy
>1 Shark, swordfish, large tuna, and King mackerel
Table adapted from Mahaffey.19

 

Electrodiagnostic Evaluations

In patients with suspected mercury toxicity who present with paresthesias, electrodiagnostic evaluations can assess neural functional status. Because methylmercury has a predilection for the dorsal root ganglia, abnormalities may be seen in the sensory nerves on nerve conduction studies. The most common electrodiagnostic pattern associated with mercury toxicity is impairment in sensory and motor nerves, with the myelin and axonal components of the peripheral nerve potentially involved.25

To increase diagnostic clarity, it is clinically prudent to integrate any electrodiagnostic findings with a complete history of underlying systemic disease (hypothyroidism, diabetes, and alcoholism) and a specific dietary history targeted at fish consumption. Kales and Goldman26 classified fish consumption as a product of the number of fish meals per week including “infrequent” (<1 fish meal per week), “occasional” (1-2 fish meals per week), “regular” (2-4 fish meals per week), and “high” (>4 fish meals per week). An additional category was created for individuals at any level who reported eating swordfish regularly, as swordfish can contain 5-50 times more methylmercury than smaller fish.26 The clinical presentation of mercury toxicity may appear neither linear or straightforward with respect to the type and degree of symptoms. Kales and Goldman26 stated “a potential exposure source is a better predictor of significant mercury concentrations in biologic media than any particular constellation of health complaints.”

Treatment

For patients with high levels of blood mercury, most commonly stemming from fish consumption, the initial recommendation is abstinence from eating fish until blood mercury levels normalize. Competent nutritional consultation should be obtained to assist the patient in transitioning to a healthy diet that does not include fish during this “normalization” period. Given the 30-65 day half-life of methylmercury in the blood, repeat blood tests should be conducted in 2-month increments until normal mercury levels are achieved.

Occupational exposure is the common source for patients with elevated levels of urine mercury, and limiting exposure, however possible, is recommended. Chelation therapies may be used in acute outbreaks resulting in neurological symptoms, with the caveat that this therapy can result in an increased distribution of mercury to the brain in some patients. Dialysis methods have also proven ineffective given the close affinity that the mercury compound has with the red blood cells.18

Recommendations for Safe Consumption of Fish

Mercury levels vary depending on the type of fish eaten, and frequency, quantity, and duration of fish intake. As such, recommendations for safe dietary consumption of fish depend on several variables. As pregnant women, nursing women, and young children may be particularly vulnerable to the effects of mercury toxicity, the FDA advises these groups to avoid intake of shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish meats. Women of childbearing age are advised to eat varieties of shellfish, canned fish, small ocean fish, or farm-raised fish to maintain a low total body burden of mercury.27 With a typical serving size of fish ranging from 3-6 oz, it is considered safe to eat up to 12 oz of cooked fish per week; however, a single serving of shark or swordfish, which contain 1 ppm of mercury, would exceed the daily recommendation of mercury ingestion. The 10 most commonly consumed fish species in United States contain <0.2 ppm, whereas fish containing ?0.5 ppm include bass, king mackerel, orange roughy, pike, and porgy.19

Conclusion

Mercury toxicity is an infrequent differential diagnosis for patients presenting with complaints of paresthesias. Although mercury toxicity may be readily considered in light of evidence of large-scale exposure, we must be increasingly cognizant of its potential in patients identified with overabundant fish consumption. A detailed dietary history that includes quantity, frequency, and type of fish consumed is necessary to adequately consider the probability of methylmercury toxicity. If clinical suspicion is aroused, blood mercury levels should be pursued as further evidence of this phenomenon. If a 24-hour urine mercury level is elevated, clinicians should more readily consider and assess an environmental or occupational source of exposure. Electrodiagnostic studies can help rule out other causes of paresthesias such as carpal tunnel syndrome, cubital tunnel syndrome, cervical or lumbar radiculopathies, stenoses, and peripheral neuropathies. The latter can be caused by excessive exposure to mercury occupationally or by ingestion of mercury-laden fish.

To evaluate route of exposure to mercury, a blood and urine mercury test, thorough dietary evaluation of fish consumption, and electrodiagnostic testing may be necessary to establish the diagnosis and etiology that will guide appropriate medical treatment. Patient education regarding mercury exposure associated with fish consumption and healthy dietary alternatives should also be conducted.

Authors

From the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Aurora, Colo.

Drs Saint-Phard and Van Dorsten have no industry relationships to declare.

Reprint requests: Deborah Saint-Phard, MD, Dept of Rehabilitation Medicine, UCHSC, PO Box 6508, Mail Stop F 493, Aurora, CO 80045-0508.

References

  1. Lacey M. UN conference backs efforts to curb mercury pollution. The New York Times. February 10, 2003;Health section.
  2. Gerstner H, Huff J. Clinical toxicology of mercury. J Toxicol Environ Health. 1977; 2:491-526.
  3. Mahaffey K. Methylmercury: a new look at the risks. Public Health Rep. 1999; 114:396-399,402-413.
  4. Food and Drug Administration. Mercury in fish: cause for concern? Rockville, Md: US Food and Drug Administration; 1995:1-7.
  5. Kishi R, Doi R, Fukuchi Y, et al. Residual neurobehavioural effects associated with chronic exposure to mercury vapour. Occup Environ Med. 1994; 51:35-41.
  6. Clarkson TW. The toxicology of mercury. Crit Rev Clin Lab Sci. 1997; 34:369-403.
  7. Magos L. Review on the toxicity of ethylmercury, including its presence as a preservative in biological and pharmaceutical products. J Appl Toxicol. 2001; 21:1-5.
  8. Bakir F, Damluji S, Amin-Zaki L, et al. Methylmercury poisoning in Iraq. Science. 1973; 181:230-241.
  9. Harada M. Minamata disease: methylmercury poisoning in Japan cased by environmental pollution. Crit Rev Toxicol. 1995; 25:1-24.
  10. Hunter D, Bomford R, Russell D. Poisoning by methyl mercury compounds. Q J Med. 1940; 9:193-213.
  11. Graeme KA, Pollack CV Jr. Heavy metal toxicity, I: arsenic and mercury. J Emerg Med. 1998; 16:45-56.
  12. Skerfving S. Methylmercury exposure, mercury levels in blood and hair, and health status in Swedes consuming contaminated fish. Toxicology. 1974; 2:3-23.
  13. Snyder RD, Seelinger DF. Methylmercury poisoning. Clinical follow-up and sensory nerve conduction studies. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 1976; 39:701-704.
  14. Letz R, Gerr F, Cragle D, Green RC, Watkins J, Fidler AT. Residual neurologic deficits 30 years after occupational exposure to elemental mercury. Neurotoxicology. 2000; 21:459-474.
  15. Bjerregaard P, Dyerberg J. Mortality from ischaemic heart disease and cerbrovascular disease in Greenland. Int J Epidemiol. 1988; 17:514-519.
  16. Zhang J, Sasaki S, Amano K, Kesteloot H. Fish consumption and mortality from all causes, ischemic heart disease, and stroke: an ecological study. Prev Med. 1999; 28:520-529.
  17. United States Environmental Protection Agency Fact Sheet. Mercury Update: Impact on Fish Advisories. Washington, DC: Environmental Protection Agency; June 2001:1-10
  18. Yip L, Dart R, Sullivan J. Mercury. In: Sullivan J, Kreiger G, eds. Clinical Environmental Health and Toxic Exposures. 2nd ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins; 2001:867-879.
  19. Mahaffey K. Recent advances in recognition of low-level methylmercury poisoning. Curr Opin Neurol. 2000; 13:699-707.
  20. Boyd AS, Seger D, Vannucci S, Langley M, Abraham JL, King LE Jr. Mercury exposure and cutaneous disease. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2000; 43:1-10
  21. Metals and related compounds. In: Ellenhorn J, Schonwold S, Ordag G, Wasserberger J, eds. Ellenhorn’s Medical Toxicology. 2nd ed. Baltimore, Md: Williams & Wilkins; 1997:1532-1613.
  22. Evans H. Mercury. In: Rom WN, ed. Environmental and Occupational Medicine. 3rd ed. Philadelphia. Pa: Lippincott-Raven; 1998:997-1003.
  23. Herrstrom P, Schutz A, Raihle G, Holthuis N, Hgstedt B, Rastam L. Dental amalgam, low-dose exposure to mercury, and urinary proteins in young Swedish men. Arch Environ Health. 1995; 50:103-107.
  24. Davidson PW, Myers GJ, Cox C, et al. Effects of prenatal and postnatal methylmercury exposure from fish consumption on neurodevelopment: outcomes at 66 months of age in the Seychelles Child Development Study. JAMA. 1998; 280:701-707.
  25. Singer R, Valciukas J, Rosenman K. Peripheral neurotoxicity in workers exposed to inorganic mercury compounds. Arch Environ Health. 1987; 42:181-184.
  26. Kales S, Goldman R. Mercury exposure: current concepts, controversies, and a clinic’s experience. J Occup Environ Med. 2002; 44:143-154.
  27. Food and Drug Administration. FDA Announces Advisory on Methyl Mercury in Fish. Rockville, Md: National Press Office; January 12, 2001. Talk Paper T01-04.

2004-03-30 Are the CDC, the FDA, and other health agencies covering up evidence that a mercury preservative in children’s vaccines caused a rise in autism?

 Vaccinations (incl corruption of science & govt)  No Responses »
Mar 302004
 

http://openyoureyessheeple.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/great-article-on-autism-mercury-and-vaccines-by-andrea-rock/

Great article on autism, mercury and vaccines by Andrea Rock

January 28, 2011 by aeronm Toxic Tipping Point is a clearly-written and well thought out review of what we know currently about mercury, autism, vaccines, and even how our amalgam fillings may tip the scales when it comes to children being diagnosed with ASD. The article also clearly explains why our government is so slow to do anything about it…  (can you say “liability”?)…..

… it’s well worth reading!  Toxic Tipping Point  (link no longer valid)

Are the CDC, the FDA, and other health agencies covering up evidence that a mercury preservative in children’s vaccines caused a rise in autism?

Andrea Rock

March/April 2004 Issue   MotherJones.com

In August of 2001, Rita Shreffler of Nixa, Missouri, sent her son’s baby tooth to a lab. A year earlier, nine-year-old Andy had been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, and Shreffler had just read a report in the journal Medical Hypotheses suggesting that such neurological disorders might be the result of mercury poisoning associated with an additive in children’s vaccines.

Wayne Middleton, of Middleton Microbiological & Environmental Testing Laboratory, was so astonished at Andy’s results that he even used his own children’s baby teeth as controls. Andy’s tooth registered a mercury level of 3,040 parts per billion. By comparison, the Environmental Protection Agency’s limit for mercury in drinking water is 2 ppb, and the limit for mercury content in waste going into a landfill is 200 ppb.

“Wayne asked me how on earth Andy could have been exposed to so much mercury,” recalls Shreffler. “When I explained that a vaccine preservative called thimerosal had exposed babies to excessive levels of mercury, he said that couldn’t be true because he used to work for a lab that made animal vaccines, and thimerosal had been discontinued in vaccines for cattle back in the early 1990s. He was sure it wouldn’t be allowed in children’s vaccines.”

He was wrong.

The Battle Lines

Did the use of a mercury preservative in vaccines directly contribute to the autism epidemic plaguing the country? And did federal health officials—fearful of liability facing their agencies and vaccine manufacturers, and loss of compliance with the federal vaccine program—put such concerns above the health of millions of infants? Are the recent studies discounting a link between thimerosalcontaining vaccines (TCVs) and autism really rife with conflicts of interest and data manipulation? Or are the parents, researchers, and members of Congress who make such claims seeing conspiracies where none exist?

The stakes in this debate are high indeed. In 2002, an estimated 1 in 250 American children was diagnosed with autism, up from 1 in 500 in 2000, and 1 in 5,000 in the 1980s. If vaccine manufacturers and government agencies are found liable for neurological damage to millions of infants, TCV litigation could rival that of tobacco or asbestos. Currently, some 3,500 families of autistic children are slated to go before a special federal vaccine court—a step that Congress has required before they engage in any civil litigation, but one that will probably be just the first in a long legal battle.

The controversy began back in July 1999, when the American Academy of Pediatrics and federal health officials unexpectedly announced that thimerosal would be phased out of children’s vaccines—a change, they insisted, that was purely precautionary. “The current levels of thimerosal will not hurt children,” said then-AAP president Joel J. Alpert. “Reducing those levels will make safe vaccines even safer.”

Prior to the AAP announcement, there had been no public outcry against TCVs. But there had been increasing concern about mercury in fish and other food, so much so that Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) authored a bill requiring the Food and Drug Administration to evaluate mercury levels in all food and drug products— including vaccines. This accounting unearthed a disturbing fact: Throughout the 1990s, as new TCVs were added to the list of a child’s required shots, federal health officials had inadvertently nearly tripled the amount of mercury—a potent neurotoxin—being injected into some babies during a critical period for brain development. Astonishingly, as each new vaccine was added to the schedule, no one bothered to total up how many micrograms of mercury children would receive as a result. By 1999, a baby who received all recommended vaccines at her two-month checkup could be injected with up to 62.5 micrograms of mercury— 118 times the EPA’s limit for daily exposure. (These guidelines are based on methylmercury, while thimerosal contains ethylmercury; the difference regarding human toxicity is thus far unclear.) During the 1990s, when some 40 million children were vaccinated, the number of TCVs given to children nearly tripled, while autism rates inexplicably increased tenfold.

Though the public didn’t know it, this discovery alarmed health officials.  Consider a June 29, 1999, email sent by Peter Patriarca of the FDA, which licenses vaccines, to Martin Meyers, head of the CDC office that monitors vaccine safety and formulates immunization policy in concert with the AAP. Facing pressure from AAP vaccine expert Neal Halsey to assess and disclose the thimerosal problem, Patriarca said he feared the FDA would be criticized for being “‘asleep at the switch’ for decades by allowing a potentially hazardous compound to remain in many childhood vaccines and not forcing manufacturers to exclude it from new products.” Noting that calculating the cumulative dose really involved nothing more complicated than ninth-grade math, Patriarca posed the questions he feared would be asked: “What took the FDA so long to do the calculations? Why didn’t CDC and the advisory bodies do these calculations when they rapidly expanded the childhood immunization schedule?”

Transcripts of CDC meetings show that officials compounded this remarkable lapse in oversight with concerted efforts to minimize both the extent of the problem and any liability their agencies faced. “We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits,” noted one CDC adviser, “and I am concerned.” Regulators chose not to act aggressively to reduce infants’ exposure to thimerosal, and as a result TCVs mandated for infants remained on the U.S. market until November 2002. (The CDC and FDA refused Mother Jones’ requests for interviews, as did vaccine makers, citing pending litigation.)

“You would think the CDC and FDA would be totally mobilized,” says Rep. David Weldon (R-Fla.), “that they would be making rapid efforts to get mercury out of all the vaccines, bringing in independent scientists to study this, and really doing a very thorough investigation. But their response has been totally inadequate.”

As a conservative and a physician, Weldon is an unlikely critic of either the vaccine program or of pharmaceutical companies. But he sat on the Committee on Government Reform, and when its then chairman, Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), was prompted by his grandson’s autism diagnosis to investigate the risks posed by mercury in vaccines, Weldon found himself listening to three years of testimony on the subject. Now, like many parents of autistic children and a growing number of scientists, he believes that exposure to thimerosal among infants born with a heightened sensitivity to mercury or an inability to excrete it could have contributed to the autism epidemic.

Dr. Weldon is also troubled by what he described in a November 2003 letter to CDC director Julie Gerberding as a “disturbing pattern” of collusion among vaccine-program officials, the pharmaceutical industry, and others with a vested interest in minimizing liability. Weldon specifically addressed a just-published and much-publicized Pediatrics article that analyzed CDC vaccine data and claimed there was no consistent link between TCVs and autism. Weldon’s review of the study revealed the “appearance of selective use of data to make the associations…disappear.” He also noted that Pediatrics failed to mention that the study’s author now works for a vaccine maker facing liability and instead identified him as still being a CDC employee, which “undermines this study further.”

Weldon also asked that the CDC provide all its vaccine data to independent researchers, which thus far it has been unwilling to do. “If it is eventually determined that an entire generation of kids was essentially poisoned, a classaction suit against the federal government could be on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars, and so there’s very good reason for them to try to cover this up,” says Weldon. “And then when they appear as though they are covering it up, it makes you suspicious that it’s all true.”

Between the Cracks

ANYONE WHO RECALLS the stinging sensation of having a skinned knee painted with a reddish-orange antiseptic called Merthiolate has an intimate acquaintance with thimerosal, simply another name for the bacteria-killing compound developed by Eli Lilly in 1929. Early internal safety data on injections containing thimerosal were not encouraging. In 1935, for example, a researcher reported to Lilly that adverse reactions indicated that thimerosal was “unsatisfactory as a preservative for serum intended for use on dogs.”

Yet that same year, thimerosal began to be added to childhood vaccines. Mostly it was used in large, multidose vials in which contamination can arise from repeated needle re-entry. Individually bottled vaccines don’t require preservatives but are more expensive, and a mercury-free preservative has been used by one pediatric vaccine maker since 1997; but in 1999 most infant vaccines used in the United States contained thimero-sal (as, indeed, some flu and booster shots—and most infant vaccines used in the developing world—still do).

Back in 1935, the FDA didn’t yet regulate drugs and vaccines. But even once it did, remarkably, thimerosal was never required to undergo clinical testing. When FDA officials asked Lilly for safety data in 1973, shortly before reviewing thimerosal’s use in over-the-counter products, Lilly’s director of regulatory affairs responded, “[I]t would be difficult to get recognized researchers to conduct new studies for safety or efficacy. They believe that over 40 years of wide usage has proven efficacy and safety beyond that which could be done in special studies.”

Nine years later, FDA officials recommended pulling over-the-counter products containing thimero-sal from the market, though 16 years passed before they were. And, still, its use in vaccines went unexamined. Thimerosal also continued to bypass toxicity testing, even after federal regulations for reviewing vaccines required it. “The absence of appropriate preclinical testing of thimerosal is a staggering oversight,” FDA drug reviewer Dr. Eric Colman wrote in 2002, after his son was diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder.

The Tipping Point?

WHEN AUTISM WAS FIRST RECOGNIZED as a neurological disorder in 1954, the symptoms described were essentially the same as those currently used for diagnosis of classic autism: severely limited speech, impaired social interaction, and repetitive behaviors such as arm flapping. Today, the broader autistic spectrum includes less severe forms in which some children may speak but have unusual behaviors and learning disabilities, or have high IQs but difficulty with social interaction, a common characteristic of Asperger’s syndrome.

Psychologist Bruno Bettelheim once convinced doctors that autism was attributable to the bad parenting of “refrigerator moms.” After that theory was scrapped, autism was assumed to be an unavoidable genetic fate. But the exponential rate increases have led more and more scientists to suspect that autism might result from an interplay between genetic vulnerability and nongenetic causes, says Harvard pediatric neuroscientist Dr. Martha Herbert.

“This new line of investigation calls for a knowledge of toxicology, genetic individuality, and biochemistry much more detailed than most current autism researchers possess.”

Those who believe in the thimerosal/autism theory suggest that the precise form the disease takes simply reflects the degree of mercury exposure. Vaccines are just one pathway for mercury to reach and accumulate in the fetal or infant brain, but a high exposure at a key time might—especially for children genetically illdisposed to flush the toxin—be the tipping point. For infants born to women with high mercury consumption, AAP vaccine-policy expert Neal Halsey commented back in 1999, “no one knows what dose of mercury, if any, from vaccines is safe.…

We can say there is no evidence of harm, but the truth is no one has looked.”

After the AAP announcement, a group of parents founded Sensible Action for Ending Mercury-Induced Neurological Disorders, or Safe Minds. Many members of Safe Minds (and other groups) are doctors, nurses, and researchers who stress that they are “anti-mercury, not anti-vaccine,” says board member Mark Blaxill.

“Virtually every step forward of any consequence with respect to the scientific agenda has come from parents. This is a new phenomenon: direct scientific activism by parents using their own professional skills to aggressively take on anyone who makes arguments based on sloppy science to try to make this problem go away.”

In 2001, two Safe Minds board members, Lyn Redwood, a nurse, and Sallie Bernard, a market researcher, published a study in the journal Medical Hypotheses that detailed overlaps between symptoms of autism and those of mercury toxicity. They noted, for example, that a brand of teething powder containing mercury was popular until the 1950s, when a doctor finally connected it to Pink’s disease, which had symptoms similar to autism. Once the teething powder was removed from the market, Pink’s disease disappeared.

Blaxill himself published a paper in the April 2003 Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders that outlined errors made in a study by public-health experts who argued that the rise in autism rates could be partly accounted for by diagnostic substitution, i.e., children previously categorized as mentally retarded now diagnosed as autistic. Blaxill’s analysis prompted the study’s authors to concede that his criticisms were valid. A partner in a leading business-strategy firm, Blaxill says that he “learned to be skeptical of ‘experts'” in his business. “I’m not intimidated by numbers or science,” he says. “I know how people can lie with numbers, and if there’s one thing I’m good at doing, it’s taking those numbers apart to find the truth. The CDC has been lying with numbers regularly.”

Blaxill also contributed to a study led by Louisiana physician Amy Holmes, who is the mother of an autistic child, which analyzed mercury levels in samples collected from baby hair. The August 2003 International Journal of Toxicology study revealed that healthy children excreted eight times more mercury via their hair than did autistic children. In fact, the more severe a child’s autistic symptoms, the less mercury was excreted in her hair, indicating that mercury also could be retained in the child’s tissue, including her brain.

Because mercury crosses the placental barrier, the study also examined maternal exposure to mercury via food, dental fillings, and the thimerosal-containing Rho D immunoglobulin injections typically given to Rh-negative women—16 percent of the population—during pregnancy. Prior to the mid-1980s, an Rh-negative woman was given this injection only after delivery to prevent complications that can occur if the baby is Rh-positive. But Rh-negative women now receive Rho D injections at 28 or 34 weeks, and any time there is a chance of a mother’s blood mixing with the baby’s—after undergoing amniocentesis, for instance. The study found that nearly half of the autistic children’s mothers had received Rho D injections, compared with only 9 percent in the control group. In addition, 37 percent of mothers in the autistic group also had 10 or more fillings containing mercury, compared with only 18 percent in the control group. The authors suggest that the near absence of mercury in hair samples of autistic infants despite higher exposure indicates that TCVs could be the last straw for children whose ability to excrete mercury is impaired or who are near a dangerous threshold due to maternal exposure.

But it’s not just parents who are conducting important research about thimerosal.

Boyd Haley, a University of Kentucky biochemist who researches heavy-metal neurotoxicology, explains that APO-E—a protein crucial in carrying mercury out of the body—comes in three varieties, ranging from one that can carry out two atoms of mercury for every molecule of APO-E, to the least protective version, APO-E4, which doesn’t carry out any. Both autistics and Alzheimer’s patients tend to have APO-E4. “There is clearly a subpopulation of people who can’t excrete even low levels of mercury effectively,” says Haley. He also found evidence that may explain why for every autistic girl, there are four autistic boys.

When he added estrogen to a petri dish of thimerosal and brain cells, the hormone reduced the rate of brain cells killed by thimerosal, whereas adding testosterone dramatically increased the death rate. Based on his results, Haley says no level of mercury can be considered a “safe dose” for infants.

Haley—whose thimerosal research was tangential to what he’s best known for, developing successful diagnostic tests for Alzheimer’s—says that once he published the risks of mercury in vaccines and dental fillings, he found himself turned down for NIH grants, after being consistently funded for decades. “People told me I would have funding problems if I worked on mercury, and they were right,” Haley says.

Richard Deth, a Northeastern University pharmacologist, has found that even low levels of thimerosal affect a critical neural pathway regulating brain-cell growth.

When Deth submitted his study to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he said he was rejected on the grounds that it hadn’t met standards for “exceptional importance and novelty.” Deth was dumbfounded: “I keep hearing from public-health officials that there is no scientific basis to support a connection between thimerosal exposure and autism. Yet here I am bringing it to you and it’s not considered important?”

“We are treated all too often,” says a researcher who insists that anonymity equals continued funding, “to patronizing remarks by researchers about ‘hysterical parents’ who ‘can’t accept their child’s genetic fate’; highly publicized but methodologically weak and conflict-of-interest-ridden studies that claim to definitely refute any role for various vaccines in the increased rates of autism but raise no alarms about the increased rates themselves; and a press blackout on subsequent critiques and refutations.”

Rep. Weldon has heard similar complaints from other researchers and is examining whether the NIH peer-review system has become as politicized as they contend. “I’ve heard that if you start wading into this,” he says, “you can ruin your career.”

Protect the Herd

Why would there be a backlash against researchers who investigate the interplay between TCVs and autism? Aside from liability issues and conflicts of interest (more on that later), the medical establishment is deeply protective of the national vaccine program, and “herd immunity”—ensuring that the highest number of people are vaccinated—is key to preventing diseases such as polio and rubella, which the program has been so successful in stamping out. And the antithimerosal lobby tends to get lumped in with the anti-vaccine movement, which threatens the herd.

In March 2003, a Pediatrics paper by Dr. Karin B. Nelson, a neurological researcher at NIH, and Dr. Margaret Bauman, a Harvard neuropathologist, challenged the thimero-sal/autism link first publicized by Safe Minds’ Bernard and Redwood. They pointed out that there is no clear evidence that the ethylmercury in thimerosal has the same ability as the methylmercury found in fish to cross from the blood to the brain. (NIH researchers now studying thimerosal say it does but is flushed from the body much quicker and thus might not be as cumulatively toxic.) The Pediatrics paper also questioned whether autism increases are indeed real: “There has clearly been a broadening of the criteria for autism, better case-finding, increased awareness by clinicians and by families, and an increase in referrals…. Whether the sum of these is sufficient to account for the more frequent diagnosis of autism is a matter of contention and is properly settled by careful research.”

But careful epidemiological research is being done by the state of California, where classic autism diagnoses nearly doubled between 1998 and 2002, and are 6.3 times higher than in 1987. The state commissioned a study to see if the increases could be explained by factors suggested in Pediatrics. Investigators, led by University of California-Davis epidemiologist Dr. Robert S. Byrd, verified all diagnoses and ruled out all alternative explanations except for better case finding and increased public awareness, which they didn’t study. “That could be a contributing factor,” says Byrd, “but for hyperawareness to explain the increases we’ve seen, we would have had to be missing 2 out of 3 cases of autism, so I don’t think that’s a plausible explanation….The increase we are seeing is real and unexplained.”

An Interpretive Dance

As the court dates draw closer, a flurry of studies both to disprove and support the thimerosal/autism link has been released. Typically they have been criticized by one side or the other as conducted by researchers with a bias or conflict of interest. And some rely on small sample sizes that can be easily dismissed. Which is why the latest flash point is over what could be a comprehensive source of data.

Several HMOs are paid by the federal government to provide children’s immunization and medical records for the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink, a database used to track pos-sible adverse side effects of vaccines. After the discovery that mercury levels had exceeded EPA guidelines, the CDC’s Thomas Verstraeten reviewed medical records of 110,000 children. A confidential February 29, 2000, version of his report obtained through the Freedom of Information Act showed that the “relative risk” for autism in infants receiving 62.5 micrograms or more of mercury by the age of three months (as had most children abiding by the vaccine schedule) was 2.48 times higher than in infants who did not. In courts of law, a relative risk of 2.0 or higher has been considered sufficient proof that a given exposure causes disease. The figure was especially significant given that autism is typically not diagnosed until after age three, and 40 percent of the children in the study were younger.

Yet these findings were never published or even disclosed to CDC advisorycommittee members. Prior to a meeting of the committee in June 2000 to discuss the report, CDC officials apparently added to the study’s database children born with congenital disorders (who had previously been excluded) and two groups of babies not yet one year old. Such statistical adjustment reduced the relative risk for autism to 1.69, comfortably below the legal threshold for causation. The lower number was provided to the CDC’s advisory-committee members.

Nevertheless, as a transcript of that meeting reveals, even the adjusted results— which still showed statistically significant relationships between thimerosal exposure and subsequent diagnoses of attention deficit disorder, language and speech delays, and a host of other neurodevelopmental problems—startled committee members.

When one member asked Verstraeten why risks of neurodevelopmental problems were higher in children with greater exposure to thimerosal, he replied, “Personally, I have three hypotheses: My first hypothesis is it is parental bias: The children that are more likely to be vaccinated are more likely to be picked up and diagnosed. Second hypothesis: I don’t know—there is a bias that I have not recognized, and nobody has yet told me about it. Third hypothesis: It’s true—it’s thimerosal.”

Asked by another member whether that third hypothesis was clearly biologically plausible, Verstraeten responded, “When I saw this, and I went back through the literature, I was actually stunned by what I saw, because I thought it was plausible.”

Bill Weil, a pediatrician representing the AAP’s environmental-health committee, noted, “There are just a host of neurodevelopmental data that would suggest that we’ve got a serious problem.… The number of kids getting help in special education is growing nationally and state by state at a rate we have not seen before.”

“Forgive this personal comment,” added Dr. Richard Johnston, a Colorado immunologist, “but I got called out for an emergency call and my daughter-in-law delivered a son by C-section. Our first male in the next generation, and I do not want that grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on.”

Verstraeten’s results also worried committee member Robert Brent, a developmental biologist and pediatrician from Thomas Jefferson University. “The medical/legal find- ings in this study, causal or not, are horrendous, and therefore, it is important that the suggested epidemiological, pharmacokinetic, and animal studies be performed,” Brent said. “If an allegation was made that a child’s neurobehavioral findings were caused by thimerosal-containing vaccines, you could readily find a junk scientist who would support the claim with ‘a reasonable degree of certainty.’ But you will not find a scientist with any integrity who would say the reverse with the data that is available…. So we are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits if they were initiated, and I am concerned.”

Perhaps because of such concerns, the committee decided to go along with the CDC’s view that it should refrain from stating a preference for thimerosal-free vaccines. The fear was that such a statement would discourage physicians and clinics from using existing inventories, and immunization rates might fall if thimerosal-free versions weren’t available everywhere. But the financial impact to manufacturers was mentioned three times by the CDC’s Roger Bernier. “It could entail financial losses of inventory if current vaccine inventory is wasted,” he said.

“It could harm one or more manufacturers and may then decrease the number of suppliers.”

Transcripts also reveal that some members of the committee went on to discuss various ways to “push” and “pull” the data further. Weldon and other critics allege that’s just what happened. When the final version of the study was published in the November 2003 Pediatrics, Verstraeten—who’d since left the CDC to work for vaccine maker GlaxoSmithKline—claimed he had found “no consistent significant associations between TCVs and neurodevelopmental outcomes.”

Writing to the CDC director, Rep. Weldon says that given the appearance of data ma-nipulation and conflict of interest, the CDC should open up its entire vaccine database to independent scientists. He notes that geneticist Dr. Mark Geier paid the CDC for data sets, only to be given many with no usable data—treatment Weldon characterizes as “abysmal and embarrassing.” Overall, he later wrote, “I have lost confidence in the ability of the CDC officials to give an honest evaluation of the matters at hand.”

Thanks to Weldon’s intervention, Geier has now been able to use the CDC database to compare autism rates among more than 85,000 children who received a TCV for diphtheria/tetanus/acellular pertussis (DTaP) with rates among nearly 70,000 children who got the thimerosal-free version. In the TCV group, the risk of autism was 27 times higher. Geier’s analysis is before two journals. Meanwhile, Dr. Walter Spitzer, a highly respected epidemiologist, has reviewed it and says, “This is important and needs to get out immediately. I see no major flaws. It is sound epidemiologically.”

“Denying the existence of the tragic, massive autism epidemic will neither cure the problem nor restore confidence in our much-needed vaccine program,” says Geier. “Rather, we must admit our past mistakes openly and honestly and then work to improve current and future vaccines. The first step is the removal of thimerosal from all vaccines, which we predict will result in the end of the autism epidemic.”

Full-Court Press

And that’s the true test of the thimerosal theory: Will rates of autism and related disorders decline in the years ahead? In May 2003 the AAP stated, “All routinely recommended infant vaccines currently sold in the U.S. are free of thimerosal as a preservative and have been for more than two years.” Yet because the FDA maintained it did not have the scientific evidence to justify a recall of thimerosal, vials distributed prior to the introduction of thimerosal-free versions were allowed to remain on the market until they became outdated. That means that regularly mandated TCVS were still available until November 2002. And injections of Rho D containing 10.5 micrograms of mercury per dose were on the shelves until April 2003, even though Rho D was produced in single-dose vials that don’t require a preservative. “Because the FDA chose not to recall thimerosal-containing vaccines in 1999,” the House Committee on Government Reform April 2003 report concludes, “in addition to all of those already injured, 8,000 children a day continued to be placed at risk for overdose for at least an additional two years.”

This timetable is crucial to the coming legal battle. If federal health officials had ordered the removal of thimerosal by a specific date, there would be a clear line in the sand to definitively indicate whether exposure promoted neurological damage. As it is, the beginning of a trend may be detectable in 2004, but due to the typical age of diagnosis, a full assessment won’t be possible until late 2008 or early 2009.

Meanwhile, though, the federal vaccine injury court is seeking to determine whether sufficient evidence exists that thimerosal caused harm to the children in the 3,500 cases before it. The court was created in 1988 to prevent drug companies from abandoning manufacturing vaccines due to rising liability costs.

Before suing manufacturers, families must file claims through the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which awards damages from a fund financed by a fee tacked on to each vaccine’s price. A team of special masters hears claims; the federal government is represented by the Justice Department. Regardless of the outcome, families can then move to civil court. In November 2002, the Justice Department asked the vaccine court to seal all documents in the autism cases; only days earlier, congressional Republicans had sneaked a provision into the homeland security bill that would shield Eli Lilly and other pharmaceutical companies from civil suits over thimerosal. Both moves were thwarted by public outcry from parents’ groups. Still, because government agencies and industry have been recalcitrant about handing over documents, the discovery process has stalled and families are starting to be allowed to move to civil court.

If the thimerosal theory starts to gain traction in court, the cost to the $8 billion-a-year industry could be gigantic. Approximately 40 million American children were immunized in the 1990s. If current rates hold true, roughly 160,000 will be diagnosed with classic autism, another 270,000 with autistic spectrum disorders, and as many as 2 million with pervasive developmental disorders.

But whether or not thimerosal is found to be instrumental in the problems facing any of these children, the systemic flaws that allowed mercury levels in vaccines to exceed federal guidelines must be fixed. In a move observers consider highly significant, former AAP official Neal Halsey also wrote a letter to Pediatrics criticizing Verstraeten’s study. In it, he suggests that an independent scientific body should review the data and take charge of evaluating vaccine safety. Having the CDC recommending vaccines and assessing their safety, Halsey has said, “is a problem.”

And while the immunization program is laudable, zeal for full compliance sometimes backfires. In an email sent to AAP officials back in 1999, Ruth Etzel of the Department of Agriculture made that point eloquently: “As you know, the Public Health Service informed us yesterday that they were planning to conduct business as usual and would probably indicate no preference for either product.

While the Public Health Service may think that their ‘product’ is immunizations, I think their ‘product’ is their recommendations. If the public loses faith in the PHS recommendations, then the immunization battle will falter. To keep faith, we must be open and honest now and move forward quickly to replace these products.”

The jury is still out as to whether thimero-sal injections caused the autism epidemic or whether the concern over ethylmercury will expose methylmercury or another compound to be the true culprit. But what is certain—as evidenced by a 10-year interagency push to study all possible causes of autism announced last November—is that researchers and policymakers are no longer dismissive of environmental factors. “To cling to a purely genetic explanation for autism is a desperate attempt to maintain the illusion that one lives in a comfortable and rational world where new chemicals and technologies always mean progress; experts are always objective and thorough; corporations are honest; and authorities can be trusted,” says Harvard’s Martha Herbert. “That human actions, rather than genes, might be responsible for compromising the health of a significant proportion of a whole generation is so painful as to be, for many, unthinkable.”

Soon, however, jurors will be joining the ranks of those who’ve been forced to give the matter some very serious thought.

Andrea Rock received the National Magazine Award for journalism in the public interest for her article documenting the failure of both the blood-bank industry and public-health officials to cope with the spread of HIV via blood transfusions and products. Her new book, The Mind at Night, explores recent scientific research about how and why we dream and what that reveals about the brain in waking consciousness.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This article has been made possible by the Foundation for National Progress, the Investigative Fund of Mother Jones, and gifts from generous readers like you.

© 2004 The Foundation for Natio

2004-03-22 My experience with mercury toxicity (amalgam illness) – Chuck Balzer

 Mercury poisoning, dental amalgams. See also Vaccinations.  No Responses »
Mar 222004
 

A Story of Mercury Poisoning (Amalgam Illness)

Chuck Balzer was kind enough to share his story with the world in hope that someone would benefit from the suffering he went through.

 

My Experience With Mercury Toxicity

by Chuck Balzer MS RD of Lincroft, New Jersey

Written March 22, 2004   (2016:  I see that Chuck Balzer is deceased)

 

After dissolving yet again into tears of frustration, pain, and perplexity, I went to a local Emergency Room (ER) in March of 2002. Approximately six months prior to my ER visit I had begun feeling slowly progressing lower leg pains and discomfort that grew to searing pain upon standing still for greater than a few minutes. At first I had self-diagnosed this pain as achilles tendonitis and accepted it as an inevitable fact of life that accompanies an active lifestyle in an aging body. As it progressed and was joined by other symptoms, I became concerned and frightened.

My primary complaints upon ER admission included bilateral lower leg pain, exacerbating arthritis, fatigue, and a feeling that I can only describe as my legs feeling unstable under me. I was greeted with the same perplexity I had been receiving over recent months from various physicians across the medical discipline spectrum. These opinions varied from a Rheumatologist’s demoralizing diagnosis of depression induced fibromyalgia, to an ER physician questioning me about the use of “hard street drugs”. One kind ER physician recommended that I be evaluated by the hospital’s Chief of Neurology. I again felt a swell of tears building as I had recently been evaluated by a Neurologist whose treatment plan was to give me a prescription for Darvocet, along with a pat on the back. As she was leaving the room, I mentioned to the ER physician that “for what it’s worth, I’m also having strange bodily twitching”. An inquisitive look came over her face and she stated that she wanted to test my mercury level. I did not think much of it and was released on advice to rest, medicate for pain as needed, and follow up with a Neurologist. Three days later an ER nurse phoned me and stated that my serum mercury level was elevated. I called poison control and was met with a curt response that if I had consumed seafood within 72 hours prior to testing, the result was meaningless. My General Practitioner (GP) also assumed lab error, or recent ingestion of seafood and had the test repeated. This time I had been seafood-free for ten days – again the results were an elevated level of mercury. My life, knowledge, and perspective on many issues ranging from medicine to the environment would never be the same.

Mercury – The Toxic Metal

Mercury (Hg) is an extremely toxic metal, second only to cadmium as the most poisonous on earth. (1) This toxin has an affinity for the human nervous system, with deleterious neurological effects extremely well documented in medical history. (1,2,3,4) In fact, the term, “mad as a hatter” comes from the psychosis associated with 19th century English Hatters who used Hg to stiffen cloth. Mercury has also been called “the great mimicker”, because toxicity can effect so many bodily systems, giving birth to multiple and diverse pathology symptoms. A partial explanation for this is that its damage is incurred by interfering with metabolic processes at the cellular level. Mercury’s multiple physiological capabilities include:

– Interference with enzyme functions (2,5)

– Elevating oxidative stress and depleting / disrupting antioxidant protection (2,4,5,6,12,25)

– Altering and damaging the cardiac, renal, and immune system (7,8,9,10,12,32)

– Peripheral nerve damage (3,11)

– Altering calcium homeostasis (2,4,12)

How Does One Become Mercury Toxic?

Our environment is relatively replete with mercury, thus making minute exposure unavoidable. Coal burning power plants dump approximately 40 tons of mercury into the atmosphere per year.(13,14) This vaporized Hg eventually finds its way into lakes, rivers, and oceans. Bacteria in water and soil convert mercury to its most toxic methylated form. (13,14) Contaminated food sources are then ingested by aqueous creatures, thus increasing their bodily mercury levels in accordance with their place on the food chain. (14) This modern biological fact has recently prompted the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to advise the general public to limit their intake of specific species of fish. (14) In addition, pregnant women have been advised not only to limit, but avoid consuming fish high on the food chain. The species of fish included in this warning are swordfish, shark, mackerel, and tuna. (14,15)

As a Nutritionist and Registered Dietitian I’ve been a life-long advocate of a healthy lifestyle. I was rightly taught that seafood is a “healthy” food choice – rich in omega-3 essential fatty acids. Even as a child, while my brother was eating hamburgers, I was eating swordfish. This preference and habit carried over into my adulthood, with the addition of copious portion sizes of canned tuna at least twice a week.

A controversial source of mercury is from dental amalgams. “Amalgam” is a generic term for “silver” dental fillings that contain up to 50% liquid metallic mercury. The scientific research is clear that the more amalgam fillings one has in their mouth, the higher their level of systemic mercury. (6,8,16,17,18) In fact mercury amalgams are the primary source of systemic mercury in the human population. (see figure below)

Source Average Human Daily Dose of Mercury

Dental Amalgam 3.0 – 17.0 ug/day (hg vapor)

Fish and Seafood 2.3 ug/day (methylmercury)

Other Food 0.3 ug/day (inorganic hg)

Air & Water Negligible traces

NOTE: ug=mcg or micrograms

(World Health Organization, Environmental Health Criteria 118: Inorganic Mercury, Geneva, 1991.)

Actions and habits such as chewing, brushing, and inordinate mouth breathing, increase both the vapor release of mercury from amalgam and subsequent inhalation.(19,20) Scientific research supports the connection between amalgam placement and pathological alterations. (6,8,9,24)

I had 22 amalgam fillings placed in my lifetime, along with being an habitual mouth breather with an abrasive diet.

Another controversial source of mercury is from the preservative Thimerosal (TMS) found in many vaccines. Thimerosal contains 49.6% ethylmercury by weight. (31) Add to this the fact that thimerosal is directly injected as opposed to ingested. The use of TMS containing vaccines was greatly increased in the early 1990’s. (32) Statistics from the U.S. Department of Education on autism in children aged 6 – 21 years showed an increase from 11,956 cases in 1992-93 to 97,329 in 2001-02. (33) An increase of 714 percent! Citing these staggering statistics, many researchers and epidemiologists have begun to look at the possible correlation between mercury containing vaccinations and the explosion of neurodevelopment disorders, including autism. (31,32,34)

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set a safe limit of 0.1 mcg of methylmercury / kg /day. (14) Other toxicology authorities maintain that there is no threshold level of mercury exposure that can be considered totally harmless. (14,22)

Approximately one month prior to the onset my progressive symptoms, I received my first ever influenza vaccine. This vaccine contained 25 mcg of ethylmercury.

The Road To Detoxification

My options were multiple, but my goal clear – detoxification. My GP, who is for the most part conventional in his medical approach, surprised me by saying that he felt that my 22 amalgams should be removed. Along with removal of my amalgam fillings, a seafood free diet, an array of self-researched nutrition supplements, I was treated with chelation therapy for systemic mercury removal.

Initially I was treated by my GP with, 2,3- Dimercaptosuccinic Acid (DMSA) or “Chemet”, a prescription medication commonly used for lead poisoning in children.(23) After three weeks and slight clinical improvement, I consulted with an integrative physician whose approach is, 2,3-Dimercapto-1-Propanesulfonic Acid (DMPS) intravenously, followed by a vitamin and glutathione drip. He tested my mercury body burden with what is called a “DMPS challenge test”.(23) The results had me excreting urinary mercury at a level five times the upper range of normal. This was after three weeks of the first line treatment with DMSA!

Mercury is a tenacious poison, thus making the process of detoxification long and arduous – one that I can only analogize as a roller-coaster of good and bad days. I knew this to be the case prior to initiation through my own research and from the healthcare practitioners treating me. Although expected, it was nonetheless challenging and frustrating.

Today

As of this writing, I have been symptom free for over two months. I am very active – alternating between biking 10 miles, walking 3 miles on the beach, ocean kayaking, and playing beach volleyball. I have had days where I’ve done all four in one day. This is an unimaginable progression from being unable to stand for three minutes without burning pain.

One of my primary concerns is the deleterious effect that Hg poisoning has had on my cardiovascular health. With my sub-par genetic history in this area, I make a special effort at strictly controlling my cholesterol and blood pressure. I have chosen a diet that is virtually seafood-free – supplementing with omega-3 fatty acids, rather than the generally advised intake of 2-3 servings of fish per week. Recent research is citing that not only is Hg toxicity deleterious to cardiovascular wellness, but the mercury content of many species of fish may negate the natural cardio- protective components contained therein. (7,25,26,32) In addition I take broad spectrum antioxidants to aid in the healing and maintenance of systems that were likely altered by mercury toxicity. (2,4,5,6,12,21,25)

Conclusion

As for those reading this, I would recommend that you take caution in your seafood intake – both amount and species. In addition, ask your dental practitioner why the second most toxic metal on the planet has been implanted into the body of most reading this piece. Don’t gently succumb to intimidating responses such as that the mercury is rendered harmless when amalgamated with other materials, or that questioning equals conspiratorial quackery. After reviewing the American Dental Association’s (ADA) position statement on the safety of amalgam, and reviewing the medical literature, it is my opinion that the ADA has been far from unbiased, balanced, and forthcoming in their position on this issue. This stance has put both the professionals within this organization and the public whom they serve at risk of ill health. At the very least, it should be mandatory that patients be informed about the content of the material being implanted in their mouths. Dental professionals are strongly advised by the ADA to carefully discard of unused or removed amalgam as to protect the environment.(27) Intriguing that, according to the ADA, amalgam is safe when placed in the mouth, but not into ordinary garbage.

On the political and environmental front, I would advise self-education and activism on this issue. Much legislation is presently underway and needed to protect the general public from both environmental and medically induced risks of mercury poisoning. (28,29,30)

Lastly I would like to thank the open-minded, proactive medical practitioners who have informed and treated me. To those brilliant professionals who were – and are – not afraid to think “outside of the box”, I owe more gratitude than these words could ever express.

About the Author

The author is a Nutritionist, Registered Dietitian, Pharmaceutical Consultant, and Adjunct Faculty Member at Brookdale College, Lincroft, NJ where he teaches Nutrition and Health, mainly to nursing students. He can be reached at (732)793-3782, or ChuckMSRD@aol.com.

References

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2. Sanfeliu C, et al: Neurotoxicity of organomercurial compounds. Neurotox Res. 5(4):283-86,2003.

3. Eto K, et al: An autopsy case of minamata disease (methylmercury poisoning) – pathological viewpoints of peripheral nerves. Toxicol Pathol. 30(6):714-22,2002.

4. Castoldi AF, et al: Neurotoxic and molecular effects of methylmercury in humans. Rev Environ Health. 18(1):19-31,2003.

5. Mahboob M, et al: Lipid peroxidation and antioxidant enzyme activity in different organs of mice exposed to level mercury. J Environ Sci Health B. 36(5):687-97,2001.

6. Pizzicini M, et al: Influence of amalgam fillings on Hg levels and total antioxidant activity in plasma of healthy donors. Sci Total Environ. 1;301(1-3):43-50,2003.

7. Guallar E, et al: Mercury, fish oils, and the risk of myocardial infarction. N Eng J Med. 28;347(22):1747-54,2002.

8. Mortada WL, et al: Mercury in dental restorations:is there a risk of nephrotoxicity? J Nephrol. 15(2):171-76,2002.

9. Bartova J, et al: Dental amalgam as one of the risk factors in autoimmune diseases. Neuroendocrinol lett. 24(1-2):65-67,2003.

10. Koller LD. Immunotoxicity of heavy metals. Int J Immunopharmacol. 2:269-79,1980.

11. Chu CC, et al: Chronic inorganic induced peripheral neuropathy. Acta Neurol Scand. 98(6):461-65, 1998.

12. Kim SH, et al: Cytotoxicity of inorganic mercury in murine T and B lymphoma cell lines: involvement of reactive oxygen species, Ca(2+) homeostasis, and cytokine gene expression. Toxicol In Vitro. 17(4):385-95,2003.

13. U.S. E.P.A. Plant by plant mercury emission estimates. December, 2000.

14. U.S. E.P.A., 1997. Mercury study report to congress.

15. Evans EC. The FDA recommendations on fish intake during pregnancy. J Obstet Gynecol Neonatal Nurs. 31(6):71520,2002.

16. Leisteuo J, et al: Dental amalgam fillings and the amount of organic mercury in human saliva. Caries Res. 35(3):163-66,2001.

17. Galic N, et al: Elimination of mercury from amalgam in rats. J Trace Elem Biol. 15(1):1-4,2001.

18. Lindow SW, et al: Maternal and neonatal hair mercury concentrations: the effect of dental amalgam. BJOG. 110(3):287-91,2003.

19. Clarkson TW, et al: The prediction of intake of mercury vapor from amalgams, pp.247-64. In: Biological Monitoring of Toxic Metals. Plenum Press. New York, Feb.1988.

20. Patterson JE, et al: Mercury in human breath from dental amalgam. Bull Environ Contam Toxicol. 34:459-68, 1985.

21. Lindh U, et al: Removal of dental amalgam and other metal alloys supported by antioxidant therapy alleviates symptoms and improves quality of life in patients with amalgam-associated ill health. Neuroendocrin lett. 23(5-6):459-82,2002.

22. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). A recommended standard for occuptional exposure to inorganic mercury. Published by NTTS. No.PB-222 223,1973.

23. Aposhan HV. DMSA and DMPS – water soluble antidotes for heavy metal poisoning. Ann Rev Pharmacol Toxicol. 23:193-215,1983.

24. Sterzl I, et al: Mercury and nickel allergy: risk factors in fatigue and autoimmunity. Neuroendocrinol lett.20(3-4):221-28,1999.

25. Salonen JT, et al: Intake of mercury from fish, lipid peroxidation, and the risk of myocardial infarction and coronary, cardiovascular, and any death in Finnish men. Circulation. 1;91(3):645-55,1995.

26. Heavy metals test hearts metal. Mercury and lead may contribute to heart disease and hypertension. Harv Heart Lett. 13(10):6-7,2003.

27. ADA Best Management Practices for Amalgam Waste. American Dental Association. January, 2003. ADA.org. 28. HB2467, Arizona.

Http://www.azleg.state.az.us/legtext/46leg/1r/bills /hb2467p.htm.

29. (Public Act 03-72) Connecticut.

30. Http://www.mercurypolicy.org/

31. Redwood L, et al: Predicted mercury concentrations in hair from infant immunizations: cause for concern. Neurotoxicology. 22(5):691-97, 2001.

32. Greier MR, et al: Thimerosal in childhood vaccines, neurodevelopment disorders, and heart disease in the United States. J Am Phys Surg. 8(1):6-11, 2003. 33. Department of Education (US). Available at: www.ideadata.org.

34. Bernard S, et al: Autism: a novel form of mercury poisoning. Med Hypotheses. 56(4): 462-71, 2001.

Quick Resources

MercuryTalk.com

AmalgamIllness.com

HerbAllure.com/mms

HerbAllure.com/mercuryforum

Yahoo! Group: AmalgamIllness

MSN Group: MercuryAmalgamIllness

 

2004-02-19 Prairie farmers consulted on GM wheat, U of M student leading independent study. Winnipeg Free Press

 Food, Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category), Genetically Modified  No Responses »
Feb 192004
 

SERIES:

– 2004-02-19 Prairie farmers consulted on GM wheat, U of M student leading independent study. Winnipeg Free Press

2005-01-25 Transgenics (GMO’s): New documentary, “Genetic Matrix”

2005-09-12 Monsanto – Video sows seeds of controversy, Univ of Manitoba    (University blocks distribution of the film.)

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ==

 Prairie farmers consulted on GM wheat,  U of M student leading independent study. Winnipeg Free Press

By Helen Fallding

 

THOUSANDS of rural residents across the Prairies are being asked what they think of genetically modified wheat in the first independent survey about the controversial new grain.

 

University of Manitoba PhD student Ian Mauro is distributing 11,000 questionnaires to rural addresses in high-wheat-growing areas of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

 

Farmers will be asked whether they would grow Monsanto’s new Roundup Ready Wheat, which is resistant to the company’s popular Roundup weed killer. It has not yet been approved for sale.

 

The farmers will also get a chance to say whether they are interested in other kinds of genetically modified wheat still under development, for example one resistant to the fusarium disease causing huge headaches for farmers.

 

Mauro and professor Stéphane McLachlan will also query farmers about what kinds of regulations or farming practices would help make the new technology work better.

 

The Canadian Wheat Board has rejected genetically modified wheat, saying most customers do not want it. Monsanto has promised not to introduce Roundup Ready Wheat until there is a way to segregate it from conventional wheat.

 

Rural residents who are not farmers will also be asked for their opinions, since their communities could be severely impacted by any international embargo, Mauro said.

 

“This issue is probably one of the hottest issues in rural communities in Canada.”

 

He hopes people will take the time to fill out the 12-page survey due back by March 15.

 

Some farmers may have been asked before by marketing companies whether they would sow genetically modified crops, but those results are generally not available to the public.

 

“We are completely independent,” Mauro said, noting there is no industry funding for the survey.

 

About $30,000 in expenses will be covered by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Manitoba Rural Adaptation Council.

 

Farm groups often speak for farmers on the issue of genetically modified crops, but have occasionally been accused of having too close ties to the biotech industry.

 

Mauro said it’s important to get “as close to the field as possible” to find out what farmers really think.

 

He hopes to publish results of the survey by early fall.

 

McLachlan said future research will explore why genetically modified canola seems to work well for some farmers, while others complain of weed problems.

2004-02-15: Nova Scotia Quakers to Minister Responsible for the census re Lockheed Martin contracts

 Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  No Responses »
Feb 152004
 

(Note to self, Jul 20, 2014:  replace this with a scanned copy of the actual letter (on letterhead), as soon as time permits.)

 

HALIFAX MONTHLY MEETING

of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

comprising Halifax Friends Meeting, Antigonish Worship Group, Dartmouth Worship Group and South Shore Worship Group

Lucienne Robillard

Minister of Industry

House of Commons

Ottawa ON K1A 0A6

February 15, 2004

Dear Lucienne Robillard,

The Halifax Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) is very concerned about the Canadian government’s decision to award a $20.5 million dollar contract to a unit of the U.S. weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE: LMT).

The $20.5 million dollars is the amount to be spent to contract out work of Statistics Canada on the 2006 National Census. Lockheed Martin Canada Inc. is to lead a consortium that includes IBM Canada, Transcontinental Printing Inc. Canada and ADECCO Employment Services Ltd. Canada.

In February 2003, Lockheed Martin Canada Inc. was also awarded a multi-year contract by the Canadian Department of National Defence to provide a health care information system on Canadian Forces personnel. That contract is worth approximately $17 million and covers only the first 14 months of the project. The contract has the potential to exceed an estimated value of $56 million, however, if all four phases are delivered over the anticipated 10-year period.

These decisions were made while Alan Rock was serving on Jean Chrétien’s Cabinet as Minister of Industry. We are writing to you, the new Minister of Industry, to make you aware of our continuing objections.

While Quakers realize that, under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and World Trade Organization Agreement regulations, non-Canadian firms are eligible to bid on contracts to provide essential public services, we are loathe to see the Canadian public’s tax dollars flow to a military contractor that benefits richly from the development (and deployment) of weapons of mass destruction.

We are also loathe to assist a principal member of the U.S. military-industrial complex to further develop its capacity to collect, store, analyze, and retrieve sensitive information on citizens of any country.

We have read that a spokesperson for former Public Works Minister Ralph Goodale has stated that under the obligations of the NAFTA, Canada cannot alter contracts with Lockheed Martin and if we were to do so we could be sued for millions of dollars. (Toronto Star, October 15, 2003)

We ask you, in your capacity as Industry Minister and in conjunction with other members of Cabinet, to find a way forward that would best extricate our country from these contracts.

While many would welcome an outcome in which Statistics Canada would be allotted the funding and capacity to fully carry out an activity as important as the Canadian census, it is of particular importance to Quakers – because of our Peace Testimony* – that contracts not be let to a subsidiary of a trans-national corporation that sold almost $27 billion dollars worth of weapons in 2002.

We therefore ask:

1. that your government cancel all its contracts with Lockheed Martin and 2. that you pledge not to grant millions more to Lockheed Martin in the future.

We would appreciate hearing from you soon in regards to this important matter.

Sylvia Mangalam

Clerk of the Halifax Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) 1388 Bedford Highway Bedford NS B4A 1E2

* George Fox’s declaration of 1661 to Charles II is referred to as the Friends Historic Peace Testimony: “We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any ends or under any pretence whatsoever. And this is our testimony to the whole world.”

cc: Paul Martin, Prime Minister of Canada; Stephen Owen, Minister of Public Works; Jim Peterson, Minister of International Trade; Bill Graham, Minister of Foreign Affairs; David Pratt, Minister of National Defence; Ivan P. Fellegi, Chief Statistician of Canada

Our Monthly Meeting will also be sharing this letter with other Friends’ Meetings, as well as the general public.

2004-01-11 Biotech critics at risk, San Francisco Chronicle. Scientists attacked. Corruption of science by corporate interests.

 Food, Genetically Modified, Health, Take back the University  No Responses »
Jan 112004
 

Ignacio Chapela, Tyrone Hayes, John Losey.  In different emails in the past we have followed the shattering attacks on each of these 3 scientists.   This follow-up adds 1 more name:  Arpad Pusztai.

One of our members has attended a conference in which Tyrone Hayes participated.

These are ordinary people doing their ordinary work.  The more people that know how the chemical/transgenic companies work, the better.  That our Governments and Universities partner with them, with our money, is reprehensible.

These are stories about attempts to intimidate scientists.  People in the media have had their careers destroyed when they have tried to publish stories that reveal the operations of these companies.

NOTE:  I believe there is an error in the text.  “…The new gene patched into the butterfly’s genome …”  should probably read “”…The new gene patched into the corn’s genome …”

/Sandra

==================

Thanks to Elaine.

(link no longer valid)

San Francisco Chronicle

Biotech critics at risk : Economics calls the shots in the debate

Mark Dowie  Sunday, January 11, 2004

Four biologists from Europe and North America met face to face for the first time on the UC Berkeley campus last month.

Although none of them is particularly famous as a scientist — not one Nobel among them — they know each other’s names and work as well as if they had been working together for 10 years in the same laboratory.  They share a painful experience.

Between 1999 and 2001, unbeknownst to the others, each made a simple but dramatic discovery that challenged the catechism of the same powerful industry — biotechnology — that by then had become the handmaiden of industrial agriculture and the darling of venture capitalists, who are still hoping they have invested their most recent billions in “the next big thing.”

If any one of the experiments of these four scientists is proved through replication to be valid, the already troubled agricultural arm of biotech will be in truly dire straits. No one knows that better than Monsanto, Sygenta and other biotech firms that have so aggressively attacked the four discoveries in question.

When he was the principal scientific officer of the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, Hungarian citizen Arpad Pusztai fed transgenically modified potatoes to rodents in one of the few experiments that have ever tested the safety of genetically modified food in animals or humans.

Almost immediately, the rats displayed tissue and immunological damage.

After he reported his findings, which eventually underwent peer review and were published in the United Kingdom’s leading medical journal, Lancet, Pusztai’s home was burglarized and his research files taken.

Soon thereafter, he was fired from his job at Rowett, and he has since suffered an orchestrated international campaign of discreditation, in which Prime Minister Tony Blair played an active role.

While Pusztai was fighting for his professional life, Cornell Professor John Losey was patiently dusting milkweed leaves with genetically modified corn pollen. When monarch butterfly larvae that ate the leaves died in significant numbers (while a control group fed nongenetically modified pollen all survived), Losey was not particularly surprised.

The new gene patched into the butterfly’s (INSERT by Sandra: error in text? corn’s)  genome was inserted to produce an internal pesticide, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), intended to attack and kill the corn borer and some particularly troublesome moth caterpillars.

What did surprise Losey was the vehement attack on his study that followed from Novartis and Monsanto, their open attempts to discredit his work and the extent to which mass media leapt to their support. Losey is still at Cornell, where his future seems secure.

Not true of Ignacio Chapela, a microbial ecologist in the plant sciences department at UC Berkeley.

In 2000, Chapela discovered that pollen had drifted several miles from a field of genetically modified corn in Chiapas into the remote mountains of Oaxaca in Mexico, landing in the last reserve of biodiverse maize in the world.

If genes from the rogue pollen actually penetrated the DNA of traditional crops, they could potentially eliminate maize biodiversity forever. In his report, Chapela cautiously stated that this indeed might have happened. He expressed that sentiment in a peer-reviewed study published by Nature in November 2001.

After an aggressive public relations campaign mounted for Monsanto by the Bivings Group, a global PR firm that began with a vicious e-mail attack mounted by two “scientists” who turned out to be fictitious, Nature editors did something they had never done in their 133 years of existence.  They published a cautious partial retraction of the Chapela report. Largely on the strength of that retraction, Chapela was recently denied tenure at UC Berkeley and informed that he would not be reoffered his teaching assignment in the fall.

When Tyrone Hayes, a UC Berkeley endocrinologist specializing in amphibian development, exposed young frogs in his lab to very small doses of the herbicide Atrazine, they first failed to develop normal larynxes and later displayed serious reproductive problems (males became hermaphrodites), suggesting that Atrazine might be an endocrine disrupter.

Hayes’ subsequent experience differed slightly from the other panelists’, but was no less troubling to academic scientists. As soon as word of Hayes’ findings reached Sygenta Corp. (formerly Novartis) and its contractor, Ecorisk Inc., attempts were made to stall his research. Funding was withheld. It was a critical time, as the EPA was close to making a final ruling on Atrazine. Hermaphroditic frogs would not help Sygenta’s cause.

Hayes continued the research with his own funds and found more of the same results, whereupon Sygenta offered him $2 million to continue his research “in a private setting.” A committed teacher with a lab full of loyal students, Hayes declined the offer and proceeded with research that he knew had to remain in public domain.

This time he found damaging developmental effects of Atrazine at even lower levels (0.1 parts per billion). When his work appeared in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sygenta attacked the study and claimed that three other labs it contracted had been unable to duplicate Hayes’ results.

Hayes, who keeps his head down on the Berkeley campus, has obtained tenure and continues to teach.  But his studies that could affect approval of the most widely used chemical in U.S. agriculture are being stifled at every turn.

In a public conversation attended by 500 people and Webcast to 4,000 more worldwide recently on the Berkeley campus, Pusztai, Losey, Hayes and Chapela shared their experiences and together explored ways to prevent similar fates from ever happening to their peers.  Their similar stories provide a unique window into a disturbing trend in modern science.

None of the four complained that his science had been challenged, although in each case it had. All science is and should be challenged. No one knows that better than a practicing scientist, who also knows that if tenure depended on a perfect experimental record, there would be very few tenured scientists anywhere in the world.

These four men were not attacked because of flawed or imperfect experiments but because the findings of their work have a potential economic effect.  The sad part is that the academies and other allegedly independent institutions that once defended scientific freedom and protected employees like Hayes, Chapela, Losey and Pusztai are abandoning them to the wolves of commerce, the brands of which are being engraved over the entrances to a disturbing number of university labs.

Mark Dowie lives in Point Reyes and teaches a science writing class at UC Graduate School of  Journalism.”

2003-11-02 Resistance starts, Letters of Protest and News Reports

 Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  No Responses »
Nov 022003
 

The original media reports are at the very bottom.

In early 2004 more than 3,000 emails of protest were received by Statistics Canada.

==============================

Sun 11/2/2003  from Mel Hurtig:

Now let’s turn to the census fiasco. Many of you will have received copies of Bill Blaikie’s questions and comments in the House, or seen them on www.vivelecanada.ca.

A couple of points need to be emphasized. It’s true that NAFTA made it necessary to open up the RFP to American firms, as Rock, Fellegi et al keep pointing out, BUT there was no necessity for a RFP in the first place!!! As I indicated previously, Statistics Canada should be developing the technology, the methodology, the implementation THEMSELVES. Given the many millions of dollars they have agreed to pay Lockheed Martin, there is ZERO reason why they could not have done so using good, talented Canadian experts.

Note the egregious repeated explanation (this time by yet another cabinet minister), that Lockheed Martin is a Canadian company!!!

Vive has sent over 2,000 letters to Rock, Chretien and Fellegi re the census. Visit vive and add your name if you haven’t  already. Vive has had an amazing 50,000 plus hits in October, a spectacular figure for such a new site.

=========================================

—– Original Message —–

From: Mel Hurtig

To: Ivan.P.Fellegi@statcan.ca

Sent: Monday, October 27, 2003 6:12 PM

Dear Dr. Fellegi:

As you know, I am a long-time fan of yours and of Statistics Canada. All the more reason I am appalled by your decision re Lockheed Martin. This said, I am certainly not blaming you for the poorly-negotiated NAFTA agreement and its national treatment provisions.

Unfortunately, I am not one bit impressed by your assurances re the data that will be collected in the next census given the involvement of the giant American defence contractor.

There are many reasons for this, beginning with the Patriot Act and the way it has already been used in the U.S., Mexico and in South America. As you know, Mr. Ashcroft and associates can request that Lockheed Martin hand over all data to them and not only will this happen but you will never know that it has happened. Rest assured that Lockheed Martin will have whatever access to your data that they wish. To believe otherwise is at best wishful thinking.

I remain quite unimpressed by your conclusion that it was necessary to bring in a foreign firm. You should have embarked on a research program allowing S.C. to become the world leader in the necessay technology. You haven’t been rated so highly in international comparisons in the past because you relied on paying tens of millions of dollars to non-citizens to do your work for you. Moreover, you know as well as I do how many truly talented Canadians work for Statscan. In my opinion you had lots of time to develop the required technologies yourself. Surely, given what you are planning to pay Lockheed Martin, money was not a problem.

I would like to once again correct you. Lockheed Martin is NOT a Canadian firm. Your own Corporations Returns Act makes that quite clear. You are quite foolish to contend otherwise and I am disappointed that you do so so stubbornly.

No doubt by now you are aware of just how outraged Canadians are as a result of this unfortunate decision.Frankly, I would have thought that you would have anticipated the anger. It’s so incredibly symbolic of how we’ve gone wrong in this country since 1984.

Lastly, you’ve done a good job of the census in the past. There’s zero reason why you couldn’t do a good or even better job in the future. This is a serious mistake that I’m certain you will regret in the future, if you don’t already.

Mel Hurtig

======================================

From:  T. Bennett Finley

Dear Dr. Fellegi:

As a Canadian I am appalled at the decision of StatsCan to use a US firm in the processing of Census data.

As someone who has worked on two censuses for StatsCan I know how sensitive the Canadian People are to the issue of confidentiality of their personal information. One of the most difficult and important tasks at census time was to convince Canadians that their information would never be shared with any other government department or agency especially Revenue Canada.

Because we who worked in the census truly believed in the promise of StatsCan that data would always remain confidential, we were able to convince most Canadians of this. I even had one discussion with Roy Romanow over this very issue.

Canadians will be most shocked when they discover an U.S. firm will have access to this information. I believe, and I think most Canadians also believe, that the U.S. government and its agencies such as the CIA and FBI, will be able to obtain any information that a U.S. corporation is able to access.

Sovereignty is a much discussed issue in Canada, sometimes mistakenly over issues that really do not effect our sovereignty, but this one does and will be seen to so do by most. There is no reason that StatsCan should have to go to outside countries to provide data services that can well be handled at home.

I do not believe you really realize what a media feast will be created when this Lockheed Martin involvement becomes an issue at the time of the next Census. The issue will be discussed by every TV outlet and newspapers throughout Canada. StatsCan and the Government of Canada will devote untold time in handling this issue. I assure you of this.

Please, please, turn back while you still can.

Respectfully,

T. Bennett Finley

2605 Estey Drive

Saskatoon, Sask. S7J 2V4

3063733973 finld AT  sasktel.net

=================================

From Sandra Finley to Ivan Felligi, Chief Statistician:

SUBJECT: awarding of Canadian Census to Lockheed

Dear Dr. Fellegi;

(I am also communicating with Allan Rock, Minister Responsible for Statscan.)

I am incredulous and disturbed that you would even consider putting the Canadian census into the hands of Lockheed Corporation. In the past the Government has been capable of handling the job. If you cannot do the job, it is likely because you are planning to gather more information than necessary, in which case re-consideration would be productive.

Do not be so naive as to think that I, for one, will provide data to a census orchestrated by Lockheed Corporation, even if under threat of going to jail for failure to comply with census requirements.

Please tell me

(1) how awarding the contract for Canadian census work to Lockheed Martin helps to strengthen the Canadian economy.

(2) how awarding this contract to Lockheed helps to develop Canadian expertise and confidence.

(Question for Mr. Rock) (3) how much money Lockheed Martin contributes to the Liberal party and its members.

By my observation,  by hiring Lockheed to do the Canadian census you:

1) Send jobs, profits and tax revenues outside Canada. Parent companies are known to benefit substantially by setting up subsidiaries in foreign countries (Canada in this case).

2) Make the statement that we can’t do the job ourselves; other people can do it better.

3) Add to our dependency on the United States.

Thank-you for your time and consideration.

Yours truly,

Sandra Finley

==================================================

from Melva Armstrong:

… Bill Blaikie (on behalf of many of us Canadians who are questioning why Stats Can is not doing this work itself) has been asking the Liberal gov’t to explain why Lockheed Martin was awarded this contract.  From Hansard:

Bill Blaikie pressures government on Lockheed Martin

Government Contracts

Thursday October 9, 2003 

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Industry.

We have heard a troubling rumour that Statistics Canada has awarded a multi-million dollar contract to an American corporation to do the dress rehearsal for the census in 2005 and subsequently the census itself. That corporation, we have heard, is Lockheed Martin, one of the biggest munitions companies in the world.

I wonder if the minister could tell us whether or not this is in fact true and, if it is true, why the Liberal government has decided to award such a contract.

Hon. Allan Rock (Minister of Industry, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, one thing I can assure the House is that Statistics Canada will continue to do its job according to the worldclass standards that it has always achieved. We will make certain of that. It has a well deserved reputation for excellence and it will continue to work to deserve that reputation.

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, let the House take note that the Minister of Industry did not answer my question and did not deny that such a contract has been offered.

Given that this is an American munitions corporation that is actually all wound up with the star wars thing, I wonder if the minister could explain to us the connection between star wars and Statistics Canada and tell us whether or not the government is involved in the letting of a contract of this kind to an American corporation. Would he answer the question? Surely he knows what is going on in his own department.

Hon. Allan Rock (Minister of Industry, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is working himself into an agitated state when he should focus instead on the real purpose of all this, which is to make sure we get statistics numbers and a census that we can rely upon. Statistics Canada will continue to do what is necessary to achieve just that.

Bill rose again in the same question period on this.

Thursday October 9, 2003

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, my question is again to the Minister of Industry.

I will allow for the fact that perhaps his first answer to my question might have been based on not knowing what the situation was. Some time has passed.

Could the minister tell us whether or not such a contract has been awarded to Lockheed-Martin for the census. If it has, could he tell us in which wing of the Pentagon all this information on Canadians will be stored?

Hon. Allan Rock (Minister of Industry, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, as with any other such crown agency, contracts awarded by Statistics Canada are awarded after a full bidding process where value for money and the contract price is evaluated.

I have every confidence Statistics Canada used that process in its entirety in this and every other case

Government Contracts

Friday October 10, 2003

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I want to re-engage the Minister of Industry with respect to the contract given to Lockheed Martin for the Canadian census.

Yesterday the minister said on the way out of the House that the trade agreements made him do it. He knows that the trade agreements did no such thing. The trade agreements do not force the government to contract out the census to anyone.

I want to ask him why he is hiding behind the trade agreements. While he is at it, if he takes the trade agreements so seriously, can he tell us why the government does not take arms control treaties seriously enough that it is participating in star wars and negotiating with the Americans over NMD? If it took those treaties seriously–

The Deputy Speaker: The hon. Minister of Public Works and Government Services.

Hon. Ralph Goodale (Minister of Public Works and Government Services, Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, contrary to what the hon. gentleman has just said, the project in question does indeed fall subject to the rules of the NAFTA and the WTO. Industry participation, according to the rules of the trade agreement, were sought by a letter of interest.

The RFP was published on the Merx system from September 4, 2002 to the closing date of November 4, 2002. Proposals were received. The proposal from Lockheed Martin was judged to be the best of those proposals at the best price. It was indeed adjudicated by an independent third party.

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, the trade agreements do not force the government to put out an RFP in the first place. This is something that could be done by the government, by Statistics Canada. There is no need to contract it out in the first place and the trade agreement does not force the government to do that.

I want to ask the minister in charge, does he not think that the knowledge by Canadians that this is going to be done by a big American multinational will cause them concerns about confidentiality and about privacy? Does he not expect that there will be a lot less compliance with the census than there has been in the past? Given the mistake that the government is about to make, will it rescind this contract immediately?

Hon. Ralph Goodale (Minister of Public Works and Government Services, Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, there are in fact stringent provisions in the contract to ensure that the security of Canadians is properly respected and that the whole process with respect to the census is conducted with complete integrity.

Government Contracts

Friday October 24, 2003

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, it seems odd that some of those who support the new Liberal leader complain when a crown corporation gets money to do something that is long overdue in this country, but they are silent about the awarding of a contract to Lockheed Martin to do the census or for that matter, the contract that was awarded to Lockheed Martin to do health information services for our Canadian armed forces.

Has the Deputy Prime Minister had a chance to look at the Lockheed Martin file? Can he tell the House today that this contract will be rescinded and the census will be done in Canada, by Canadians, where it belongs?

Hon. Andy Mitchell (Secretary of State (Rural Development) (Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario), Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the reality is that it is a Canadian subsidiary that will be conducting the census. The information will be maintained in Canada. It will be conducted in Canada. It will be a Canadian enterprise that provides a valuable service to Canadians, which we have always done in terms of the census.

Government Contracts

Wednesday October 29, 2003

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, Canadians do not need more information, if they are up to their you know what in alligators. They do not want the Liberals counting the alligators. They want them to do something about it.

I have a question is for the Minister of Public Works and it has to do with the awarding of the census contract to Lockheed Martin.

I have information from a competitor of Lougheed Martin that it received this contract, not through due process, but sometime after the RFP had been initiated and others had gone through the process. However, Lougheed Martin showed up at the end and received the contract.

Could the Minister of Public Works undertake to look into this and report back to the House as to why that American corporation received favourable treatment in that way?

Hon. Ralph Goodale (Minister of Public Works and Government Services, Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the information that the hon. gentleman has just described is certainly at odds with the information I have. He has asked me if I will look into what he has suggested. I certainly will do that, and I will get back to him if there is anything further to report.

=============================================

Thu 10/30/2003   I (Sandra Finley) received this communication from Dr. Fellegi:

From:  Ivan.P.Fellegi@statcan.ca

Statistics Canada would like to clarify and provide additional information concerning the contracting out portion of the 2006 Census with private industry. First of all, I would like to emphasize that only 20% of the work for the 2006 Census will be contracted out while the remaining 80% is being done by Statistics Canada.  The distribution, collection, follow-up and storage of questionnaires will be done strictly by Statistics Canada.

Important improvements and significant changes in the way census data are collected and captured are required for the 2006 Census.  These changes will move the census from what is now a highly decentralised, manual collection operation, to a more centralised and automated approach while addressing the issues of privacy, security, confidentiality and the provisions of an Internet response option for Canadians.  However, these and other improvements require the implementation of a very complex logistics and control system.

Why did we decide to contract out a portion of the software development for the 2006 Census?  Simply because, after a painstaking review, we concluded that we lacked the expertise needed.  The 2006 Census clearly has to offer the option of Internet filing of census returns, and this has to be integrated with the traditional paper filing option which, of course, must also be offered.  Further complicating the logistics is the fact that we will be mailing, for the first time, the census questionnaires to about 65% of all households in Canada.  This, together with the need to know at all times who completed and who did not their census forms (in order to initiate timely follow-up of those who did not do so) leads to exceptionally complex logistics.

Traditionally census returns have been key-entered but that option will no longer be available in 2006.  As a result, it will be necessary to introduce the scanning of the paper returns into the 2006 Census – and, again, integrate all of that with the Internet-filed returns. The complexity of these highly technical operations was entirely outside our range of past experience. When one considers the fact that the census must go almost flawlessly (because we do not have a second chance), it became abundantly clear that contracting out was the only realistic option.  In addition to the technical complexities, we also conducted a very thorough cost benefit analysis of the “buy or make” option, to determine the appropriate approach for undertaking the significant systems development and operational activities required for the 2006 Census.  The factors considered included cost, timeliness, integration, risk and the availability of resources/expertise and while not the only factor in our decision, the business case was clearly in favour for the private sector.  Incidentally, the same conclusion was reached not only by our US counterpart, but also by the Office of National Statistics in the UK for their census systems development and processing activities.

After a lengthy consultation process with industry, proposals were invited by Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) through a Request for Proposal (RFP).  Critical security and confidentiality requirements were built into the RFP to ensure the protection of census returns.  Indeed, these safeguards will be even higher in 2006 than they were in 2001 or in earlier censuses.

Under the North American Free Trade Agreement and World Trade Organization Agreement regulations that governed this procurement, non-Canadian based firms were eligible to submit a bid.  All of the bidders were Canadian firms, although several were US owned.  The evaluation of proposals was very rigorous, with no opportunity for biasing the results either in favour of, or against, any one bidder.  In addition, an independent fairness monitor certified that the selection process followed the terms of the RFP and that the process was fair and objective to all bidders.  Through this process, PWGSC awarded the contract to Lockheed Martin Canada Inc. to carry out activities in support of the 2006 Census. The firm will be leading a consortium consisting of IBM Canada and Transcontinental Printing Inc. Canada and ADECCO Employment Services Ltd Canada.

Lockheed Martin specifically has a successful track record in developing and implementing solutions in a census context and has access to international expertise based on lessons learned in the United States and United Kingdom censuses.  Statistics Canada is capitalizing on this existing experience and investment.

Statistics Canada will maintain full control of all aspects of the census.  Indeed, the data collected from Canadians will, at all times, be under the care and full control of Statistics Canada and everyone working on the census will, as always, be subject to the provisions and penalties of the Statistics Act.  Only census agents who are sworn to secrecy under the Statistics Act – and subject to considerable penalties should their oath be violated (including imprisonment of up to six months) – will have access to individual census information.  Career employees will at all times be in charge of every aspect of census operations

All contractors will be security screened, and sworn in under the Statistics Act.  As such, they will become Statistics Canada employees, subject to all the sanctions of the Act.

Stringent safeguards will be in place to ensure that only information required for the processing operation is accessible by the contractor.  The census processing site will be strictly isolated from external networks, so unauthorised transmission of census data would be physically impossible.  In addition, all sites will be subject to 24-hour supervision by our career employees.  Needless to say, data will never be processed or stored outside the country.  Processed data will be stored at Statistics Canada premises.

Statistics Canada has a well-earned reputation for quality statistics, which in turn depends on the trust of Canadians.  It would never endanger that reputation by exposing to the slightest risk the confidential data that its respondents provide – let alone exposing it to access by any foreign country.  The confidentiality of 2006 Census returns will be as stringently guarded as in the past; in fact, technology allows us to implement even better safeguards.  We are ready to expose our plans to any expert scrutiny.

Ivan P. Fellegi
Chief Statistician of Canada

=============================================

(S.F. distributed into network Oct 21/03)

Subject:  Strengthening the Canadian economy and society

Below: newspaper reports “Federal government acknowledges U.S. defence firm (Lockheed) doing Canada’s census”. Compliments of Allan Rock.

Let me connect a few dots and tell you what I’m doing on this one.

– The Meridian Dam exercise taught the importance of safeguarding control of our WATER resource against the efforts of transnational corporations and local short-sighted self-interest which would exploit that resource, not for the common or long-term good. As I see it, in order to maintain control of our communities and environment in the face of globalization/centralization it is essential to fight every effort that will weaken us. Build strength.

– Recall the article that explained how transnational companies set up a subsidiary in Canada to gain significant tax advantages? Tax is paid on Revenues minus Expenses. Some parent U.S. company’s dictate that the Canadian subsidiary purchase specified goods and services from the parent company at a price set by the parent. In some cases those prices are greatly inflated. The Canadian subsidiary thereby has substantially reduced earnings and pays little tax to the Canadian Government. The American parent company of course, makes rather nice profits.

– We know something about what makes economically and socially healthy communities:

It is important for people to PRACTICE a particular skill. Without practice the skill is lost. A sure way to lose a skill is to become dependent upon someone else to perform the task for you. Business skills are not exempt. If, by way of example, you buy only imported pre-fab houses, over time local people lose the know-how to build their own homes. They become completely dependent upon the whims and prices of the marketplace/outsiders. Inuit communities are a prime example of the decay that occurs. Not only is the knowledge base lost, but the jobs are exported and self-confidence is drained. Welfare is the panacea. (“colonizing” or colonialism. You should give thought to the questions “Are we being colonized and if so, by whom or what?”. In order for a country to be colonized there have to be collaborators at the top and ignorance in the population about what is going on.)

– Governments in Canada have made decisions such as those which favour truck transportation of goods over rail transport, congesting and breaking down the highway infrastructure, requiring more and bigger highways, contributing to global warming and the decline of communities. If we have learned anything it is that handing over responsibility to others for decision-making guarantees that the decisions will be made in the interests of “others”.

– I have a choice. This Lockheed incident is sufficiently serious to me, to warrant 3 small actions, to be added to the actions of others who are equally concerned. Below you will find a web-site you can email from, another option.

(1) I phoned and emailed Allan Rock’s office. They tried to put me off to Statistics Canada. Don’t let them do it; the Minister is responsible: 613-995-9001.   Allan Rock’s e-mail address is minister.industry@ic.gc.ca

(2) Ralph Goodale is the sole Liberal Member-of-Parliament from Saskatchewan. He is candidate to be the Deputy Prime Minister in the upcoming government of Paul Martin.  He is also Minister of Public Works and partly responsible, as the exchange in the House of Commons shows.  I think he is lobbiable. Telephone +1 (819) 997-5421 (Ottawa). … Who is your MP?

(3) Send information on into email networks.

====================

The Vive Le Canada web-site below has a letter you might like. It makes some good points.

My letter to Rock:

SUBJECT: awarding of Canadian Census to Lockheed

Dear Minister Responsible Allan Rock,

Canadian census data is sensitive and private. I am incredulous and disturbed that you would even consider putting it into the hands of Lockheed. You need to find a way to keep the census work in independent Canadian hands. The Government itself should be doing the work. In the past the Government has been capable of handling the job. If you cannot do the job, it is likely because you are planning to gather more information than necessary, in which case “trim your sails”.

Do not be so naive as to think that I, for one, will provide data to Lockheed, even if under threat of going to jail for failure to comply with census requirements.

Please tell me

(1) how awarding the contract for Canadian census work to Lockheed Martin helps to strengthen the Canadian economy.

(2) how awarding this contract to Lockheed helps to develop Canadian expertise and confidence, and therefore business potential.

(3) how much money Lockheed Martin contributes to the Liberal party and its members.

By my observation, by hiring Lockheed to do the Canadian census you:

1) Send jobs, profits and tax revenues outside Canada. Parent companies are known to benefit substantially by setting up subsidiaries in foreign countries (Canada in this case).

2) Make the statement that we can’t do the job ourselves; other people can do it better.

3) Add to our dependency on the United States.

Thank-you for your time and consideration.

Yours truly,   Sandra Finley

===========================================

SUPPORTING MATERIAL

Industry Minister Allan Rock has awarded U.S. military company Lockheed Martin the contract to prepare a 2005 test run of the next Canadian census. Lockheed Martin, which manufactures ballistic missiles and other weapons of mass destruction, is also a prime candidate to receive a contract to do the entire Canadian census in 2006.

Vive le Canada.ca has created a form that allows users to send an email to Industry Minister Allan Rock and oppose giving Lockheed Martin the contract for the Canadian census in 2006. A sample email is provided, and users can edit it if they like. Vive le Canada.ca is also threatening a boycott of the census should Lockheed Martin get the contract.

To participate in the action, visit:  (link no longer valid)

It only takes 15 seconds to make a difference. Let’s stop the Americanization of the Canadian census!

Sincerely,

Susan Thompson and Vive le Canada.ca

For more information:

U.S. Defence Contractor to Count Canadian Heads (Oct. 9)  TEXT BELOW   (link no longer valid)

Federal government acknowledges U.S. defence firm doing Canada’s census

(Oct. 9) TEXT BELOW

Census at risk if U.S. firm in on it, critics say   

Census deal “shocks” citizens

U.S. defence contractor to count Canadian heads

Canadian Press

UPDATED AT 8:51 PM EDT Thursday, Oct. 9, 2003

Ottawa — An American military contractor will carry out most or part of the next Canadian census, the NDP said Thursday — a charge the federal government didn’t deny.

Lockheed-Martin produces ballistic missile-defence systems, advanced gun systems, land attack missiles — and now they’ll help Ottawa compile information about Canadians, New Democrat MP Bill Blaikie told the House of Commons.

The U.S.-based multinational company will work on the 2006 census, Mr. Blaikie said.

He called it his worst nightmare — a U.S. defence contractor getting detailed information on Canada — and asked the government to confirm that a contract had been signed.

Industry Minister Allan Rock refused to answer the question directly, saying only that Statistics Canada will ensure a thorough census.

Mr. Blaikie said such a contract would raise serious privacy issues such as confidential data being stored outside the country.

===================================

canada news

Thursday, Oct 09, 2003

Federal government acknowledges U.S.-based defence firm doing Canada’s census

OTTAWA (CP) – They make land-attack missiles, ballistic-missile defence systems, and now this U.S.-based military manufacturer will help produce Canada’s next census.

Lockheed Martin has been hired to help the federal government gather information about Canadians for the 2006 census, Industry Minister Allan Rock acknowledged Thursday.

He said there was nothing to worry about. “I assume they have expertise that will enable them to perform the contract,” Rock said outside the House of Commons. “Canadians will be involved in the performance of the work because it’s a Canadian subsidiary that will be doing it.”

Best known as a munitions and aeronautics manufacturer, the Colorado company has a Canadian subsidiary based in Kanata, Ont.

The company produces computer information systems and is actively involved in data management.

Rock didn’t specify how Lockheed Martin would contribute to the census, which every five years compiles and publishes data on Canadian residents.

However, one opposition critic said he had a few details – and said he finds the idea chilling.

“This goes even deeper than anything I would have imagined in my worst nightmare,” said New Democrat MP Bill Blaikie, who raised the issue in the Commons.

“Which wing of the Pentagon is this information going to be stored in?”

Blaikie said the company has been awarded a contract to help Statistics Canada prepare a 2005 test run of the census and is a prime candidate to receive a contract to do the entire census the next year.

Rock said free-trade rules and globalization automatically make Lockheed Martin a potential candidate for federal contracts.

“The whole bidding process is cut by the WTO and NAFTA (agreement), which requires that non-Canadian firms get to bid as well,” Rock said.

“The bidding process was carried on in accordance with Public Works rules and I assume the lowest bidder, for the best price, for the best quality got the job.”

He said he’s sure that the people involved in the decision were fully aware of Lockheed Martin’s role in weapons production. Details on the company’s products are listed on the company website, along with the corporate slogan: “We never forget who we’re working for!”

Eighty per cent of Lockheed Martin’s business is with the U.S. military and American government agencies.

Blaikie said the census contract would raise serious privacy issues such as confidential data being stored outside the country.

Canada has been buying aircraft from the company since 1939.

Officials from Lockheed Martin and Statistics Canada were not immediately available for comment.

© The Canadian Press, 2003

2003-10-30 The War Business: Squeezing a Profit from the Wreckage in Iraq. Democracy Now

 Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  No Responses »
Oct 302003
 

http://www.democracynow.org/2003/10/30/the_war_business_squeezing_a_profit

 

We speak with leading scholar and author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire Chalmers Johnson about reconstruction in Iraq and profiting from empire. [includes transcript]

 

 

Chalmers Johnson, leading scholar of Asia and US-Asian relations and author of “Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire” in his latest article writes:

“Munitions making and war profiteering have supplanted the energy and telecommunications deals pioneered by Enron and WorldCom in the late 1990s as the most efficient means for well-connected capitalists to engorge themselves at the public trough.”

Johnson concludes, “This is the future. When war becomes the most profitable course of action, we can certainly expect more of it.”

•Chalmers Johnson, a leading scholar of Asia and US-Asian relations and the founder of the Japan Policy Research Institute. He is the author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. His next book, The Sorrows of Empire will be published by Metropolitan Books in January. His latest article titled “The War Business: Squeezing a Profit from the Wreckage in Iraq” appears in the November issue of Harpers magazine.

AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about the reconstruction in Iraq, in his latest article, [Chalmers] Johnson writes, quote, “Munitions making and war profiteering have supplanted the energy and telecommunications deals pioneered by Enron and Worldcom in the late 1990’s as the most efficient means for well-connected capitalists to engorge themselves at the public trough.”

Johnson goes on to talk about how the U.S. trains militaries in 70% of the world’s nations, and the historical parallels of profiting from empire. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Chalmers Johnson.

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: It is good to have you with us.

You start with a quote from President Dwight Eisenhower, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Dwight Eisenhower says ìWe must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.î

So what’s happening?

CHALMERS JOHNSON: The two most famous generals we’ve ever had as presidents, George Washington first and then Eisenhower, both warned about the enormous dangers to liberty of a large standing army, of a huge vested interest in the armed forces.

What’s happened today, of course, is simply the — Well the profits of the largest arms manufacturing company, Lockheed-Martin, last year went up 47%.

When you start making that much money, you know you’re going to get more war. It is virtually out of control.

There is no real system of oversight.

You must remember that since the Manhattan project during World War II, the 40% of the defense budget, all of the intelligence budgets are secret.

They’re so-called black budgets.

That means it is really impossible for anyone to do oversight on it, including members of Congress.

And now with two wars, as we enter the new millennium, it’s become enormously profitable. About one-third of the money being spent on Iraq, by one estimate from the “Washington Post,” is going into private hands in one way or another.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the private military contractors?

CHALMERS JOHNSON: It’s a business that’s developed, above all, in the 1990’s. It was Cheney’s idea when he was Secretary of Defense in the first Bush administration — that allegedly, to save money, they were going to start privatizing numerous activities in the armed forces that, until then, were performed by soldiers on active duty.

This — He sent out a contract to the Brown & Root division of Halliburton — a very famous old company that bankrolled the lives of Lyndon Johnson and many other famous Texas politicians.

He gave a contract to Brown & Root to estimate how they might start privatizing the various activities in the armed forces. Then he turned around and gave Brown & Root the contract to carry out their plan and as he left the government at the end of the Bush administration, Cheney went on a couple of years late to become the president of Halliburton, which is the company that owns Brown & Root.

Basically it means today that a soldier in the armed forces doesn’t have any of those experiences that were present there in World War II or Korean or Vietnamese wars.

People don’t do guard duty. They don’t clean up the barracks. They don’t clean the latrines. They don’t do kitchen police, so-called K.P.

That’s all done for them by private contractors. It is extremely lucrative and the way the contracts are written, profits are guaranteed. It is impossible to lose on these things.

Perhaps the greatest example is camp Bondsteel in Kosovo in the Balkans, which is the most expensive base that we’ve built since the Vietnam war. It was built entirely by Brown & Root.

It is today operated for the government by Brown & Root, just as are the bases in Kyrzakstan, in Turkey, and many other places of that sort. It is a huge growing business.

Then there is also the other world of really mercenary organizations, like Vinnell, DynCorp, NPRI. These are retired military officers, normally from the special forces, who have gone into business supplying training, above all training, but in many cases, logistics operations.

The Vinnell corporation, for example, has been hired by the U.S. government now for well over a decade to train the Saudi National Guard. We have the people supplying the defense to President Karzai in Afghanistan.

This is an explosive growth of privatization in the armed forces.

Now Cheney originally argued, so did Rumsfeld before he became Secretary of Defense, that this was to save money. There is no evidence that it saves money. It just goes quickly into private hands.

There is ample evidence from Iraq right now that the money could have been more efficiently spent, had it not been subcontracted to Halliburton and to Bechtel and things of that sort — if instead it had been turned over to an Iraqi government.

AMY GOODMAN: It is interesting.

You end the piece by talking about the lack of rigors of the marketplace and without them, only the profit remains — the biggest of all munitions companies, Lockheed-Martin corporation playing an important behind the scenes role in developing support for Bush’s war with Iraq.

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Yes, they did.

They played a very influential role in various organizations. It looked like they were simply public interest, public education organizations, but which had long advocated a war with Iraq ever since the — 1991, the first war with Iraq.

It has been to their — War is the business.

What I mean when I say it’s not private enterprise, it is much more like state socialism. You have only one customer. The customer is not particularly interested in getting the best possible use of his money. He is much more interested in simply getting the contract filled.

Moreover, there is a huge circulation of elites today in the sense that most of the operating positions, appointed positions in the pentagon today are executives from the military industrial complex, whereas by contrast, any number of the high officials in these companies are retired high-ranking American military officers.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you for being with us, Chalmers Johnson, his piece appears in this month’s “Harper’s,” called “The War Business; Squeezing a Profit From the Wreckage in Iraq.”

Chalmers Johnson’s piece ends: “This is the future. When war becomes the most profitable course of action, we can certainly expect more of it.”

2003-04-03 Great Sand Hills (o&g): “Power through Canada’s back door.” NDP & Sask Party. Political Contributions.

 Corruption, Oil & Gas  No Responses »
Apr 032003
 

. . .   influence-peddling, The problem is the political system and it CAN be fixed!

 

RELATED:

 

Premise:  a well-designed system has built-in safeguards against abuse.  Separation of legislative, judicial functions, etc. in a democracy serves this purpose.  Another example is accounting systems which can be poorly, or well, designed to protect against fraudulent activity.

 

Observe the intimate dance between the oil and gas industry and politics through the Great Sand Hills example.  It is somewhat misleading:  the ROOT problem is not limited to the present Government, as one might conclude.

Correspondence during the Piapot re-zoning (summer 2002):  “I (Sandra) do not know how effective the opposition Sask Party will be in this effort.   In conversation with an emminent Reginian I am told that a partner from a Regina law firm was part of a Sask Party fund-raising committee that went to Calgary.  They met with “the oil and gas industry and who should be sitting in the front row but Dwayne Lingenfelter”.   (Lingenfelter, Deputy Premier Sask, NDP Government)

When I questioned the Sask Party,  I was told that it was a fund-raising dinner and they have no control over who buys the tickets to the dinner (it wasn’t solely for the oil & gas industry – – ??).

The article below, Power through Canada’s back door by Gillian Steward, tells the same story.   I have another documentation of the Sask Party going to Alberta to raise money at a $300 a plate dinner in the oil patch.  I can’t find it at the moment,  but  this captures it all:  Saskatchewan Party received millions in donations from Alberta companies (Oil and Gas in particular). CBC

It seems that we have both the NDP and the Sask Party courting the oil and gas companies in Calgary.  Shouldn’t be surprised.  It only confirms my conviction that Saskatchewan  needs to be like some other jurisdictions and limit contributions to political parties to private individuals.   That won’t fix a corrupted system, but it might at least help.

UPDATE:   The Sask Party won the 2007 Election.

———

Jan. 7/03,  I came across a newspaper article about the Sask Party’s connection to the o&g industry:

From the Winnipeg Free Press:

Power through Canada’s back door
Sask Party Night at the Calgary Petroleum Club

Sep 22, 2002   by  GILLIAN STEWARD

 

” … let me take you to a fascinating fund-raiser held last March at the Calgary Petroleum Club.

Elwin Hermanson, former Reform MP and now leader of the Saskatchewan Party, was the guest of honour. It was throne speech day in Regina, but Hermanson left as soon as he could and chartered a plane to Calgary. Wearing a smartly tailored navy suit and a bright Alberta Tory-blue tie, he looked every bit the grinning, wide-eyed farmboy who can’t quite believe he’s been admitted to the inner sanctum of the oilpatch. The sumptuous oak paneling, the million-dollar art collection, the crystal chandeliers all speak of a club that is very picky about who it lets in the door.

About 175 diners, or the corporations they work for, each paid $250 to be here. There’s Bud McCaig, chairman of Trimac Corporation, key fund-raiser for the Alberta Tories and one of the most powerful backroom boys in Alberta politics. Gerry Maier, former president of TransCanada Pipelines is on hand. So is Dick Wilson, communications czar for Alberta Energy Company (later renamed Encana after merging with PanCanadian to create the largest independent oil and gas producer in the world).

Preston Manning takes a seat at Hermanson’s table. At the next table sits Jim Dinning, the former Alberta finance minister who masterminded the Klein cutbacks and is expected to take a shot at the premiership himself some day soon. Meanwhile, he’s a senior executive with TransAlta Corp. and is busy raising money for Paul Martin. Former Tory MP Lee Richardson is also seated in the inner circle. As the faithful pour the wine and pass the bread, Cliff Fryers takes to the podium to welcome them. He’s a lawyer, former chief-of-staff for Manning and co-chair of the committee that has organized this fund-raiser. Fryers jokes about making a “clean sweep” of Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan. Then he urges everyone in the room to stand behind Hermanson once he gets elected premier “because, as we can see with Gordon Campbell in B.C., it’s tough going at the beginning.”

 

Then the other co-chair, John Zaozirny, strides to the podium. A former Lougheed protg and energy minister, Zaozirny is a lawyer’s lawyer who has made a career of being a shareholder and corporate director of oil and gas companies. During the past year he’s also been busy advising and fund-raising for the Gordon Campbell Liberals in B.C.

Zaozirny asks everyone born in Saskatchewan to raise their hands. Lots of hands go up. Then it’s time for grace. Veteran stockbroker Scott McCreath jogs up to the podium, and this is the way he begins his prayer: “Thank you Lord for giving us the freedom to do whatever we want whenever we want…” None of the mostly-white, mostly-male crowd seems taken aback by the tone of the prayer.

There are two very important “trophy heads “here as well. Sitting at a front-row table is Dwain Lingenfelter, former NDP deputy premier of Saskatchewan, now a senior officer with oilpatch heavyweight Nexen (formerly CanOxy). Beside him is Doug Anguish, former NDP MP and Saskatchewan energy minister, who left the public sector after Renaissance Energy made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

When Hermanson takes to the podium, almost the first thing he does is introduce Lingenfelter and Anguish to the crowd. He refers to them as former Saskatchewan cabinet ministers, never mentions the NDP — doesn’t have to — and says how pleased he is to have them there. Jim Dinning leads a round of applause for the grinning converts.

 

Hermanson gives a speech which includes all the neo-conservative nuggets. He promises to cut taxes in Saskatchewan — corporate, small business and personal, stop expansion of Crown corporations that compete with the private sector and stop growing government. He also promises to lower oil royalties and “streamline” environmental regulations. When he finishes, people ask for more detail. What about Saskatchewan’s eroding tax base? What about the NDP civil service — how will he prevent it from undermining his agenda? Then someone puts in a good word for Saskatchewan Crown corporations. Hisses and boos rise from the crowd. Hermanson says the big Crown utilities — SaskTel, Sask Power, SaskEnergy — “are too important to the economy of Saskatchewan to be put on the sales block, but we can’t keep them the way they are either.”

 

As the fund-raiser winds down, emcee John Zaozirny takes to the podium again and is soon expressing his glee at the thought of “Alberta, BC, and Saskatchewan — three business running governments.” What was that? Just in case everyone hasn’t understood, he says it again: “business running governments.”

Now, it was just a fund-raiser, not a founding convention for a political party. But in both Alberta and B.C., opposition parties have been almost wiped off the map. The Saskatchewan Party could indeed topple the beleaguered NDP within the year.

 

…  For the sake of democracy this country needs a variety of strong, broadly based political parties. But if what I saw at the Petroleum Club last March is any indication, that’s not likely to happen soon. Instead, we have a united right/centre/left that’s content to play power games behind closed doors — power games that will pay them rich dividends long before before any residual benefits trickle down to the rest of us.

 

Gillian Steward is a Calgary-based author and journalist who was also a visiting professor at the University of Regina’s School of Journalism earlier this year. ”

==================================

SANDRA SPEAKING:

I don’t like “left” and “right” labels – sometimes I’m one, sometimes the other.  I don’t know Gillian Steward.  In case some people will stereotype her input on the basis of being “leftist”, let’s look at what Andrew Coyne (to some a “rightest”) has to say:

(Status:  this is off the Internet, no ability to identify who submitted it.  I am awaiting a reply from Andrew to confirm his authorship.  Because of Jan 10th deadline (tomorrow) I don’t want to hold off sending this.)

 

2001:  Andrew Coyne wrote about the topic of political contributions recently. He notes that, “the corporations that are most closely regulated by the federal government were among the biggest contributors to the Liberals. Bombardier, recipient of millions of federal dollars [including the $1.2 billion in loans that the government just gave to Northwest Airlines so that they could turn around and buy jets from Bombardier] over the years contributed $100,502.

    “But the most fascinating fact of all is that the rest of us continue to put up with this.  We do not have elections in this country.  We have auctions. Why do you suppose these large corporations have decided to fork over so much of their shareholders’ money? Why, in such disproportionate numbers, to the governing party?

    “People who defend this sort of thing often say that corporations who give large sums of money to the people who regulate them are just trying to ‘support the democratic process.’ ”

All of this is the result of the government expanding its scope far beyond what any government should do, namely protection of citizens’ rights and national defense (both of which are true public goods, which is to say that by the simple fact that the government is protecting one citizen, it is by definition protecting all citizens).

The tax code, of course, is the main culprit. Governments have put into place a high tax regime (but also provide plenty of loopholes for their lawyer friends to figure out and charge for) in order to raise tons of money to spend on social programs. Governments also have complicated tax laws on the books that charge corporations different amounts of tax depending upon whether money is raised via equity or debt, and whether it is paid out as a dividend or a capital gain, etc, etc.

And, the government also charges different industries different tax rates, too, like for example when Paul Martin lowered the corporate tax rate but neglected to extend the rate reduction to energy companies, too, which some think has to do with the fact that the energy sector is located square in the middle of Western (ie, non Liberal voting) Canada.

So with all of this chicanery written into the tax code, corporations pay the big bucks to the politicians in order to have themselves exempted from (or at least have the harm to them reduced) the prevailing tax rates and regulatory rigamaroll.

 

This point is made, too, by Coyne, “you might not expect any big favours if you do not contribute.  You might not even expect any severe retribution if you don’t. But you can hardly expect your reticence won’t be noticed, and remembered in those moments when you might once have hoped to be given the benefit of the doubt. This is a small country.  Perhaps nothing overt is said, but can you really take that chance?”

 

——

I shake my head along with Coyne:  “But the most fascinating fact of all is that the rest of us continue to put up with this.  We do not have elections in this country.  We have auctions.”

 

It is through naivete, failure to assume responsibility for our own governance, or through failure to think, that one would NOT insist that political contributions be limited to individuals.  (It has the added benefit of leveling the playing field for “alternate” political parties that are not in a position to court the centres of power and influence, whatever those may be (they aren’t ONLY corporate interests).

 

THE PROBLEM IS THE EXISTING SYSTEM:  favours can be bought and sold.  You can turf out a political party but that won’t solve the problem, as the article by Gillian Steward clearly demonstrates.  In time the same corruption will again surface – it’s under-the-surface just waiting to bubble up.

THE SYSTEM HAS TO CHANGE.  The difficulty with change is that no political party in power will enact legislation to cut off a major source of its funding and access to influence when out-of-office (unless the quality of political leadership suddenly changes.)  It is why we citizens will.

The Integrity Legislation we develop needs, not so much to define what constitutes acceptable behavior in Government, but to establish the built-in safeguards against corruption.  The “public trough” creates great centralized temptation as a source for personal or institutional gain.

Other people have come to the same conclusion:  we require a political system based on financial contributions from individuals.  Contributions from all entities, other than individuals, need to be outlawed.

2003-03-29 Great Sand Hills (o&g): Whose influence will be peddled at Energy Conference? Yours?!

 Corruption, Oil & Gas  No Responses »
Mar 292003
 

RELATED:   2003-04-03   Great Sand Hills (o&g): Sask Party Role. Political Contributions.

 

From earlier email you will recall the coming Energy Conference, April 2nd in Regina.

 

Many of the names are the same as in the GSH (Great Sand Hills) debacle:  Clayton Woitas, Profico Energy was at the press conference (last summer) with Ron Clark (President SaskEnergy) that announced the questionable “new” gas reserves at Shackleton adjacent to the GSH,  Burlington Resources,  Minister of Industry & Resource Developmt (now Cline instead of Lautermilch), Husky Energy (the newspapers had said that the o&g companies would be making an announcement on the same day as SaskEnergy.  They did not,  Husky was one of the 3 companies;  Nexen is right in there and so on.

 

It would be good to have citizen watchdogs to oversee the schmoozing that will go on at the pitchfork fondue, casino and comedien.  But the price tag is $850.00 so I, for one, won’t be going!

Perhaps there will be media people in attendance.  I wonder if they’d notice someone who just sat in to listen?!

For new people:  see the newspaper article (Winnipeg Free Press, Gillian Steward) that gives an idea of the relationship between the petroleum industry and the politicians.

 

First, the information on the Energy Conference:    (link no longer valid)

 

Wednesday, April 2nd and Thursday, April 3rd, 2003 Delta Trade and Convention Centre

 

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2003

 

Morning: Explore Saskatchewan

 

7:00 – 8:30 Registration

 

8:30 – 8:40 Chairman’s Opening Welcome

 

James Baker, J.P. Baker Management Inc., Conference Chair 8:45 – 9:00 Opening Remarks

 

The Honourable Eric Cline, Minister of Saskatchewan Industry and Resources

9:00 – 9:15 Review of Saskatchewan Energy Sector

 

James Baker, J.P. Baker Management Inc., Conference Chair

 

A summary of production and activity statistics, to answer the question of why energy is driving our economy. 9:15 – 10:30 Oil Sector Review

 

Husky Energy, David Long, General Manager, Heavy Oil

 

EnCana Corporation, TBA

 

Provident Energy Trust, Randy Findlay, President

 

KERN Partners, Pentti Karkkainen, Principal Partner

 

With many substantial, active oil companies in Saskatchewan, it is important to examine why they are doing business in the province. This presentation will look at exactly that, taking a close look at their activities and impacts. 10:30 – 10:50 Nutrition Break

 

10:50 – 12:00 Natural Gas Review

 

Profico Energy Management Ltd., Clayton Woitas, President

 

Apache Canada Ltd., Floyd Price, President

 

Burlington Resources, Brian Moreland, VP South Business Unit

 

Government of the Northwest Territories, Robert Marshall, Senior Pipeline Advisor

 

Presentations by leaders in the Natural Gas industry will examine current activities, where the industry is headed, and why these leaders are choosing to stay and do business in Saskatchewan. Current partners will discuss the investor perspective. 12:00 – 1:30 Lunch Speaker

 

The Honourable Lorne Calvert Premier of Saskatchewan Introduced by Hal Kvisle, President & CEO, TransCanada Pipelines Afternoon: Our Technology

 

1:30 – 3:00 Explore our Technology

 

Moderator: David Barnard, President University of Regina

 

Green House Gas Technology Centre, Malcolm Wilson, Director Energy and Environment

 

Saskatchewan Research Council, Dr. Laurier Schramm, President & CEO

 

Petroleum Technology Research Centre, Frank Proto, Chairman

 

Natural Resources Canada, Bruce Stewart, Director of CANMET

 

A look at Saskatchewan’s emerging oil and gas research centres and how they can assist the industry. 3:00 – 3:20 Bus transportation to Regina Research Park

 

3:45 Tour the Green House Gas Emissions Technology Centre and the Petroleum Technology Research Centre

 

5:00 Pitch Fork Fondue BBQ

 

The Terrace, 10 Research Drive, Regina Research Park 9:00 Casino Regina/Show Lounge, featuring Comedian Brent Butt

 

 

Thursday, April 3rd, 2003 Morning: Future Energy

 

8:30 – 10:00 Alternative Energy

 

Moderator: Paul Martin, Paul Martin Communications

 

Wind: Enbridge, Chuck Szmurlo, VP Planning and Business Development

 

Micro Turbines: SaskEnergy, Dean Reeve, Executive VP

 

Ethanol: Saskatchewan Agrivision, Lionel La Belle

 

Nuclear: Cameco Corporation, Jamie McIntyre, Director Sustainable Development and Corporate Relations

 

Luscar Ltd., Bob Bell, Vice President, Marketing

 

How companies are pursuing alternative energy opportunities in Saskatchewan in a post-Kyoto world. 10:00 – 10:20 Nutrition Break

 

10:20 – 12:00 Heavy Oil: Production and Upgrading

 

Moderator: Rich Kerr, Chief of Engineering, Global Operations, Nexen Canada Ltd.

 

Nexen Canada Ltd., Rich Kerr, Chief of Engineering, Global Operations

 

Colt Engineering, Steve Kresnyak, Director

 

Niven Fischer, Alf Fischer, Principal

 

Airborne Pollution Control, Murray Mortson, COO

 

Petrovera Resources, Domenic Torriero, VP Geology & Geophysics

 

A close look at heavy oil production, and presentations on emerging upgrading technologies and their impact on heavy oil production in the province. 12:00 – 1:30 Lunch Presentation by Canadian Light Source Inc., featuring the Synchrotron Project at the University of Saskatchewan.

 

Rob Slinger, Director, Business Development, will explore the potential of the $175 million Synchrotron for applied energy research. Afternoon:

Stakerholders, Working Together

 

1:30 – 3:30 Stakeholders: Working Together

 

Moderator: Frank Proto, Chairman, Petroleum Technology Research Centre

 

SaskPower, John Wright, President & CEO

 

Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM), Ken Engel, Executive Director and David Schnell, Reeve RM Browning

 

Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), David Pryce, VP Western Canadian Operations

 

Small Explorers & Producers Association of Canada (SEPAC), George Fink, President, Bonterra Energy

 

Wrap-up, Q&A: James Baker

 

Each of these industry organizations will make presentations relative to their business in Saskatchewan. As a group, they will engage delegates in discussion including an open Q&A session giving you the opportunity to share your insights and hear other opinions.

 

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