(Editor's Note: In the last few days, I've had about a half-dozen emails with links sent to me referring me to an old story I wrote in 1999, and asking me where the URL was on my website. It doesn't exist. I wrote the story on an old AOL subdomain website some two years before www.jonchristianryter.com was created. Since there appears to be an interest in this subject 11 years later, I decided to try to reconstruct the information as best I could and place it here for those who might still be interested in the material today.

I wrote the story (which appears under this italicized section) on June 30, 1999 and posted it on July 1st of that year. The report, or those parts of it that I actually wrote, came into my possession from an official in the Clinton Administration. This individual and I had a discussion a week or two earlier on the possible links between Alzheimer's and aluminum, based on two totally unrelated reports that crossed my desk. The first one, a puff piece for the aluminum industry on the increased use of aluminum in cookware in the 20th century and the second, an increase in the reported cases of Alzheimer's Disease in the elderly over the second half of the 20th century. When I saw the statistics of the second report there appeared to be an uncanny connection to the first.

It was by mere chance that I ran into this particular DHHS official and raised the question if there were any statistics I could find on either the CDC or DHHS websites that showed a correlation between the increased use of aluminum cookware and the rise in reported cases of Alzheimer's Disease. The official raised a counter-question, asking if I would be surprised to learn that the causes of Alzheimer's might be remarkably similar to the causes of autism. The official scribbled a DHHS web address on a scrap of paper and handed it to me. "This should get you going in the right direction," I was told. Only it didn't. It was a password protected URL and I didn't have the password. Yet, after making a phone call, within two days I had several publicly available DHHS documents (if you knew where to find them), some of which defended the argument that Autism was not caused by the mercury suspension, ethylmercury, that is used to preserve the shelf-life of vaccines and even some over-the-counter items we buy today and reports from several medical doctors arguing their reasons why thimerosal was the cause of autism.

While there were no reports in the files I received from Dr. Paul Offit, he is the public face of the scientific consensus that vaccines containing ethylmercury pose no risk to humans. Offit is the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Professor of Vaccinology and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania. In a paper Offit wrote, he noted: "...Certain types of bacteria in the environment can change mercury into methylmercury. Methylmercury makes its way through the food chain in fish, animals and humans. At high levels it can be toxic to people. Thimerosal—a preservative still used in the influenza vaccine—contains a different form of mercury called ethylmercury. Studies comparing ethylmercury and methylmercury suggest that they are processed differently in the human body. Therefore, ethylmercury (the type used in vaccines) is much less likely than methylmercury (the type of mercury in the environment) to accumulate in the body and cause harm."

Dr. Richard Kao, DDS, Ph.D, Adjunct Professor of the University of Pacific disagrees. Since ethylmercury is used in both medicine and dentistry, Kao did an extension study on the impact of mercury on the environment and human health. In the abstract on his study, Kao studied the major toxicology concerns about mercury in all forms but concentrated on methylmercury (CH3Hg+) and ethylmercury (CH3CH2Hg+). It seems the primary difference between them is that ethylmercury clears the body in about one-third the time it takes methylmercury to pass through the system and be excreted from the body through feces or urination. The problem is both are equally toxic. It's just the long term risks are considerably less with ethylmercury. But, the risk exists. And, scientists have always known the risks were there. In their view, the risks were outweighed by the benefits of the vaccines and other medications whose shelf lives were prolonged by using thimerosal, a preservative.

The conclusions reached by Dr. Kao were supported by a study done by the National Academy of Science in conjunction with the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council. The study focused on what appeared to me, when I read it for the first time, as unrelated to the thimerosal issue since it dealt with bacterial infections caused from gingivitis and bronchial irritations and even pneumonitis. However, the Kao report mentioned something I did not see again until I read the National Academy of Science report entitled Toxicological Effects of Methylmercury in the National Academies Press. A term I was not expecting popped up and made me recall Dr. Kao's article. It referred to the use of amalgams (silver, copper, tin and mercury) in both dentistry and medicine. In the basic math of adding 2 + 2 and coming up with "4," I realized that only a small percentage of the children being vaccinated with vaccines containing thimerosal developed autism or other attention deficit disorders, just as only a small percentage of adults using aluminum cookware develop Alzheimer's in their later years. I believe Dr. Kao may have answered the "why."

In his report, Dr. Kao mentioned two seemingly unrelated points. First, he mentioned amalgam-associated mercury vapors. Second, he mentioned bacterial infections in the body from diseases like gingivitis, bronchitis and pneumonia as catalysts that might metabolize ethylmercury into long-life methylmercury. (This was the point raised in the article, below.) Add to that the opinion of Dr. Kao that bacterial infections (usually the reason for getting a juvenile vaccination) can metabolize a release of mercury vapors from the amalgams in the vaccine sufficient to send toxins through the bloodstream to the human brain. If those toxins are converted from ethylmercury to methylmercury then the puzzle—and the question of whether or not amalgams cause both autism and Alzheimers—is solved.

NOTE: I came into the possession of the second draft of a response being prepared by the Interagency Group [IAG] of the National Vaccine Program of the Centers For Disease Control for release sometime late Friday afternoon. The CDC, like all other bureaus of government recognize that when you need to release negative information, release it on Friday since most Americans ignore the news on the weekends. The concern of the IAG staffer who turned this document over to me was that the CDC was engaging in a coverup that was deliberately attempting to play down the danger of the chemical thimerosal, an organomecurial preservative used to stabilize many of the vaccines, immoglobins and some food products simply because the government cannot afford to dispose of its entire inventory of vaccines containing this substance.

The European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products issued a white paper on June 29, 1999 announcing the conclusions of a study initiated by the EAEMP in conjunction with European Pharmaeopocia, the WHO and "relevant" drug manufacturers in Europe. The FDA was represented at this meeting by Dr. Norman Baylor.

The purpose of that prior meeting, which was held on April 19, 1999, was to discuss the ramifications of the findings of CPMP Working Document CPMP2286/98. This meeting was followed by yet another meeting on May 17, 1999. The meeting was chaired by the CPMP's Multidisciplinary Group. The sole objective on its agenda that day was to discuss a plan of action to be followed with respect to the drug Thimerosal, which has been found to create cumulative levels of toxicity in those who ingest it through vaccination.

Thimerosal is an organomercurial preservative that is used to stabilize, or preserve the "shelf life" of most vaccines, immunoglobins, and many other medical products. The awareness that a problem existed with thimerosal first arose in 1990 when the World Health Organization began to notice cases of allergic reactions to thiomerosal due to the presence of methylmercury in the bloodstreams of those who were inoculated with vaccines containing thimerosal. (Thimerosal, under the right circumstances, metabolizes as methylmercury, a very toxic, very long-lasting substance.)

If you remember the "mercury-poisoning" scare a few years ago when Americans were warned not to eat fish netted in certain areas of the world, you will understand the concern discussed at that time by the IAG. Mercury is a highly toxic element which, once ingested, is not quickly or easily expelled from the body. Residue will continue to build with each additional ingestion until it reaches a damaging level in the body. The concern expressed by WHO in 1990 with respect to methylmercury or ethylmercury, the metabolized form of thimerosal, was that there existed no international recommendations on the maximum allowable intake of this chemical in infants and small children.

Because standards did not exist, WHO was concerned that the accumulated affect of more than 200 Mg of methylmercury in the system of a fetus or infant could cause moderate to severe brain damage that would result in a rise in learning impaired children. In the rebuttal being prepared at this moment by the IAG for the National Vaccine Program Office of the CDC, the planned statement (as of 4:00 p.m. on June 30) was: "The WHO, EPA, ATSDR, and FDA created safety exposure guidelines for Hg based on studies of infants born to women who chronically ingested high concentrations of methylmercury. These safety guidelines include safety factors of 3 to 10-fold."

To support this statement, they will declare that: "Since 1997, the FDA, as mandated by FDAMA, has prepared and analyzed lists of Hg containing drugs and foods. In addition, the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products formed a working group on thimerosal and, with input from the FDA, recommended that for [the] vaccination of infants and toddlers, the use of vaccines without thimerosal and other mercurial-containing preservatives should be encouraged; however, in order not to jeopardize vaccine supplies and immunization programs, it is advisable to introduce requirements for the elimination of organomercurial preservatives in vaccines on a gradual basis."

The "lord" giveth and the "lord" taketh away. In other words, on one hand the report suggests that from 1990 WHO warned that studies were conducted to determine the "safety levels" of thimerosal and the IAG is assuring the public that the health care officials and physicians who are administering vaccines containing organomercurial preservatives are conscious of the potential toxicity to infants and toddlers if an accumulated range in excess of 200 Hg is reached, and would no longer vaccinate children, or prescribe other medical products containing methylmercurial preservatives.

Second, the IAG recognizes that since too many of its stores of vaccines contain methylmercurial preservatives that it cannot afford to dispose of them since, as they state in the draft report, to do so would jeopardize their national vaccination programs. In other words, the IAG and the National Vaccine Program would rather play with words in order to minimize the danger to both mothers and infant and toddler children, and in some cases, the unborn fetus, because it will prove to be either too expensive or too inconvenient to dispose of their stockpile of mercurial-based vaccines because, in their collective brainstorming on June 30, the risk of permanent neurological damage to those ingesting thimerosal is, in their "public relations opinion," minimal.

In their world alert on June 29, the EAEMP identified what they termed "...the well-recognized problem with thimerosal," and detailed the potential risks of the preservative. Those risks include, but are not inclusive of nephrotoxicity, nerve damage, and hypersensitivity to the vaccines themselves, causing allergic reactions. The concern of this writer is, at the moment, what the CDC did with that report when they received it from the EAEMP, and how the IAG—including the same Dr. Norman Baylor who attended the April19 meeting—responded to the report when they received it from Robert Breiman of the National Vaccine Program Office on June 29. The normal sluggish wheels of the federal government of the US speedily chugged into action--not to issue a national alert of their own advising physicians and health care workers to immediately suspend inoculations containing Thimerosal until the vaccine supplies containing ethylmercury preservatives could be replaced with vaccines utilizing a safer preservative, or even to address the potential problems thimerosal posed on those whose accumulated ingestion of the drug had exceeded 200 Hg. Instead, the wheels of government churned out the first of two drafts of "talking points" on how to address the EAEMP white paper when the news hit the media...talking points to minimize the potential outrage .

That was the report. Parts of it may have been edited and/or embellished by rewriting by websites who picked it up and added a word here and there until I can no longer identify what was my original work. The original article was written 11 years ago. And, since AOL killed all of their subdomain websites five or six years ago, that material no longer exists.

The initial article was posted by a reader on Free Republic. On July 2, the DHHS called a special meeting in Washington for July 4 to discuss the ramifications of the Jon Christian Ryter article. It was decided, during that meeting, that a mainstream media newspaper article should discredit my article and reduce it to the ramblings of the vast rightwing conspiracy. A rebuttal article was prepared during that meeting. It was supposedly released to the AP the following day. But, by 10 p.m. on July 4, a few hours after it was composed in the meeting, I received it by fax. I posted the story on my website—scooping the "AP" with their own verbatim story by 24 hours. Again, since there was not enough people reading my site in 1999 to qualify as a gas burp on the radar screen, it was not until the "real" AP story appeared a day later and one of my site's readers posted my website posting and the AP story—and the dates both appeared—side-by-side on Free Republic.

That's when the London Sunday Times noticed it. They called me about 2 a.m. that same night. I faxed them enough of my files on thimerosal to write their own article. The World Health Organization, which had been warning both individual people and nations about thimerosal since the Soviets did clinical studies on thimerosal poisoning in 1977, concluded that tubular necrosis, nervous system injury, brain damage, coma and death in elderly patients who had a lifetime of being innoculated with, or using pharmaceuticals containing, mercury preservatives.

The World Health Organization did a partial-to-complete ban on the use of thimerosal as a pharmaceutical preservative in Europe from 1995 and 2005. On July 7, 1999 the American Academy of Pediatrics and the US Public Health Service called for a ban on vaccines containing thimerosal. By 2001, all vaccines for use on children under the age of seven were available without thimerosal, or with only trace amounts of the ethylmercury substance.

The CDC, which continues to support the use of ethylmercury as a preservative, still argues that "...no scientifically conclusive evidence exists of harm from exposure to thimerosal preservative-containing vaccine, whereas evidence is accumulating of lack of any harm resulting from exposure to such vaccines.. Therefore, the benefits of influenza vaccination outweigh the theoretical risk, if any, of thimerosal exposure through vaccinations." Thimerosal was created by Eli Lilly in the late 1920s to add "shelf-life" to vaccines and other pharmaceutical items. And, although the toxicity nature of mercury has never been in question, thimerosal has been the preservative of choice for pharmaceutical companies all over the world until the WHO began fighting its use in the mid-1970s.

Interestingly, my burp on the radar screen in 1999 caught the attention of author David Kirby who included portions of this exchange in his New York Times best-selling book, EVIDENCE OF HARM which is now being sold as an Internet book by Google. On page 45 of his book, Kirby noted that "...One week before the government went public with the news..." (about thimerosal) "...word was leaked to a conservative Internet columnist...Jon Christian Ryter. On July 1, his warning appeared on a right-wing site called FreeRepublic.com. "Warnings on thimerosal will be played down by National Vaccine Program Office of the CDC on Friday," his headline said. Ryter claimed to have a document implicating the CDC in a cover-up in order to "play down the danger of the chemical thimerosal, simply because the government can't afford to dispose of its inventory of this substance."

Kirby continued, adding: "According to Ryter, the European Agency for Evaluation of Medicinal Products had recently called thimerosal a 'well-recognized problem' that can cause nerve damage. But the sluggish wheels of the US federal government speedily chugged into action—not to issue a national alert of their own. The risks were acceptable to them. Are the risks acceptable to you? The choice is yours, even though the CDC seems to think the choice is theirs."

Kirby further noted that the CDC issued a statement on thimerosal the following Friday afternoon when, as I noted, official Washington dumps its most dismal news knowing that few Americans pay attention on Saturday. Kirby concluded, saying: "He was right." It never ceases to amaze me how one small voice can be heard around the world. If we have a website, all of us have that long-reaching voice. Maybe it only reaches a handful of people at a time, but ultimately, it's a voice that reaches around the world. I guess that's why Barack Obama and the globalists feel its now time to silence the blogsphere, and why Utopian Congressmen and Senators on both sides of the aisle believe they have the constitutional right to abridge our right of free speech when it interferes with the agenda of those swiftly moving toward one world government.

While I initially thought the recent inquiries about my old thimerosal article were due to Kirby's book showing up on Google's Internet book service, it appears now it's more likely due to the US Supreme Court weighing in on the case of Bruesewitz v Wyeth, and the question of whether or not a pharmaceutical company can be sued for injuries caused by their vaccines. At the center of the lawsuit is the National Childhood Vaccines Injury Act of 1986 which protects manufacturers from being driven out of business by tort claims. When Congress enacted the law, it also created, within the Court of Federal Claims, a Vaccine Court to arbitrate cases where parents and their lawyers could argue that the vaccinations given to them or to their children causes what malady resulted after the shots were administered. In Bruesewitz v Wyeth Hannah Bruesewitz's parents argued that the innoculation for diptheria, pertussis and tetanus [DPT] created seizures which left their daughter disabled. In 1998 Weyth replaced the formulation and removed the old vaccine off the market. In their lawsuit, the Bruesewitzs argued that what Weyth and the FDA did was too little, too late.

The Vaccine Court found the Bruesewitz's lawyer did not prove the injury was caused by the vaccine. The case was moved to federal court where the judge ruled that the family's claim for damages was preempted by the federal law that barred them from suing Weyth Labs. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals agree with the Distruct Court. In a pre-trial hearing to determine if the case proceeds to trial, the lawyers for the Brusewitz family argued that the National Childhood Vaccines Injury Act did not close the door to all lawsuits, and that the language left room for debate on the subject.

Chief Justice John Roberts responded to the plaintiff's lawyer's argument that he found little room for debate by saying, "I would have thought the argument would go the other way: that because they set up a compensation scheme, that was a good sign that they didn't want to allow state law claims." Justice Anthony Kennedy posed the question of whether or not the pharmaceutical industry could survive the assault of new tort claims if the court decides to hear Bruesewitz v Wyeth. The Obama Administration filed an amicus brief in favor of Weyth Labs in this case. While the Bruesewitz v Wyeth case is not about autism, waiting in the wings are hundreds of cases that are.

Those parents waiting for their day in court may or may not find that Bruesewitz v Wyeth is the ticket of admission. In 2008, in Riegel v Medtronic, the Supreme Court sided with the immunity granted pharmaceutical companies from the National Childhood Vaccines Injury Act. And even though the Roberts Court does not appear ready to undo those protections they may have to because of a 2006 ruling by the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The 5th Circuit allowed families suing three vaccine manufacturers to bypass the Vaccine Court sue the vaccine companies. The plaintiff's argument was that the problem that caused autism was not the vaccine, it was the preservative, thimerosal. Since thimerosal is not a vaccine, it isn't be covered by the shield of protection that protects vaccines under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.

The case involved two brothers in Mississippi, Robert Edgar and Mattheew Clayton Holder who received a series of vaccinations to immunize them from childhood diseases. Both boys were diagnosed with autism. In March, 2006 Jay Kilpatrick, a Jackson, Mississippi lawyer, argued on behalf of the Holder family and won the first major victory in a thimerosal case. Kilpatrick argued that the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Law covered only the vaccine, not the preservatives used by the pharmaceutical company to extend the shelf life of the vaccine. The court agreed and pulled the shield of protection away from the pharmaceutical companies who manufacture thimerosal.

In 2002, Sen. Bill Frist [R-TN], a medical doctor, dropped a midnight rider into an approrpriations bill that specifically mandated that claims against thimerosal manufacturers must be brought in the Vaccine Courts. That provision was repealed in 2003 but the Vaccine Court still acts like the law is still in effect. Kilpatrick is still fighting his thimerosal case in court—but it's a regular US District Court and not the Federal Court of Claims. If he wins, the liability is owed by the pharamaceutical companies and not the taxpayers. To prevail, he has been told by the federal court in Mississippi that it is not enough to prove that the Holder boys' autism is a result of thimerosal, he must prove which of the three pharmaceutical companies produced the thimerosal that caused the autism in his clients. When Congress, which receives hundreds of millions of dollars from Big Pharma, wants to protect their "corporate constituents," they place the bar so impossibly high that not even an Olympian could hurdle it.