2000 Simpsonwood CDC conference
The 2000 Simpsonwood CDC conference (officially titled Scientific Review of Vaccine Safety Datalink Information) was a two-day meeting convened in June 2000 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), held at the Simpsonwood Methodist retreat and conference center in Norcross, Georgia. The key event at the conference was the presentation of data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink examining the possibility of a link between the mercury compound thimerosol in vaccines and neurological problems in children who had received those vaccines.
A
The conference
The conference was convened following a resolution by the
Attendees included experts in the fields of
Presentations and supporting documents from the conference were subject to a news embargo until June 21, 2000, at which point they were published by the ACIP.[6] After the conference, researchers carried out a planned second phase to further analyze and clarify the study's preliminary findings. The results of this second analysis were published in 2003.[7]
In the anti-vaccination movement
The June 20, 2005, issue of
Salon.com later said that the errors in the article "went far in undermining Kennedy’s exposé",[2] and corrected it on five occasions. The publisher later retracted it in January 2011, stating that criticisms of the article and flaws in the science connecting autism and vaccines undermined its value.[2]
By the time the final study results discussed at Simpsonwood were published in 2003, the lead researcher, Thomas Verstraeten, had gone to work for
In September 2007, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions rejected allegations of impropriety against Verstraeten and the CDC. Addressing Kennedy's statements, the Committee found that: "Instead of hiding the [Simpsonwood] data or restricting access to it, CDC distributed it, often to individuals who had never seen it before, and solicited outside opinion regarding how to interpret it. The transcript of these discussions was made available to the public."[10]
See also
Notes
- ^ Offit 2008: pp. 94–95
- ^ a b c Lauerman, Kerry (January 1, 2011). "Correcting our record". Salon.com. Retrieved August 3, 2011.
At the time, we felt that correcting the piece—and keeping it on the site, in the spirit of transparency—was the best way to operate. But subsequent critics […] further eroded any faith we had in the story's value. We've grown to believe the best reader service is to delete the piece entirely.
- ^ Offit 2008: p. 91
- ^ Transcript: pp. 3–10
- ^ Transcript: p. 11
- ^ Transcript: pp. 256–257
- ^ PMID 15060252. Retrieved May 14, 2009.
- ^ Kennedy, Robert(June 20, 2005). "Deadly Immunity". Rolling Stone.
- ^ Lauerman, Kerry (January 16, 2011). "Correcting our record". Salon.com. Retrieved June 15, 2019.
- ^ Enzi MB (September 2007). "Thimerosal and Autism Spectrum Disorders: Alleged Misconduct by Government Agencies and Private Entities" (PDF). U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 27, 2009. Retrieved May 14, 2009.
References
- ISBN 978-0-231-14636-4.
- "Scientific Review of Vaccine Safety Datalink Information June 7–8, 2000 (transcript); Thimerosal VSD study Phase I, 2000" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on September 21, 2011. Retrieved April 8, 2010. Hosted by SafeMinds, an anti-vaccination group[citation needed]