A presentation to be shared at a vaccine advisor meeting with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week, argued that animal studies suggested that the use of the vaccine preservative thimerosal “may have long-term consequences for the brain.
However, there appears to be no research.
Lynn Redwood, former leader in Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group that lists US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as founder, is scheduled to give a presentation at the CDC’s Vaccination Practices Advisory Committee meeting on Thursday.
A slide posted online Tuesday called the 2008 neurotoxicology study by Berman RF, et al. “Low-level neonatal thimeromonal exposure: long-term brain outcomes.” The presentation argues that the results of studies in neonatal rats suggest long-term “neuroimmune effects” from vaccine preservatives.
The quote appears to refer to Dr. Robert F. Berman, professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis, whose research focuses on brain damage and neurodevelopmental disorders.
But “I don’t have a neurotoxicology publication by that title,” Berman told CNN. “As far as I know, no references to the slide set exist together with me, at least as a co-author.”
Berman published his paper It had a similar title in 2008, but it was in different journals and involved different animals. It also led to a dramatically different conclusion.
“My research was published in Toxicological Sciences and found no evidence of thimerosal exposure at the vaccine level in mouse behaviors that we thought were related to autism,” Berman said. He “had been bothered and offended” that his research appears to be cited like this on a slide in Redwood.
The Redwood presentation was removed from the CDC website on Tuesday and replaced by a version that does not include Berman’s quote.
The citation was first flagged by Dr. David Boulewor, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Minnesota. He told CNN:
Neither Redwood nor HHS responded immediately to CNN’s request for comment presentation.
The presentation was already controversial, as Thimerosal is the focus of supporters who argue that it can cause autism because it contains the form of mercury. Preservatives were taken from most vaccines as a precaution about 25 years ago, and multiple studies found no evidence of neurodevelopmental effects.
However, Redwood said last month in a video posted on the Children’s Health Defense website that he believes the pediatric vaccine thimerosal has led to his son’s autism.
This topic sparked concern among public health experts this week that it was a last-minute addition to the vaccine advisor agenda, which would expose claims about vaccine safety. Kennedy dismissed all 17 previous experts on the influential vaccine panel, claiming that they had a conflict of interest and was added after replacing them with eight new members a few days later.
These members raised concerns from the public health world and the entire political spectrum. Sen. Bill Cassidy chairs the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and calls for the meeting to be postponed this week.
It is also not the first time that a report in Kennedy’s realm has been found to be flawed in citations. The first version of the Trump administration, released last month and focused on child health, also cited several nonexistent studies. A HHS spokesperson calls them “minor quotes and formatting errors.”
During a hearing before the House Energy and Commercial Health Subcommittee on Tuesday, Kennedy was questioned by Rep. Raul Lewis, a California Democrat and doctor, about Maha’s reporting error.
“Why did the report include quotes to sources that do not exist?” asked Lewis. “How does that happen under your leadership?”
Kennedy argued that “all of the basic claims in that report are accurate,” and that the misquoting was “corrected within 24 hours.”
