DANISH PAPER STRIPPED OF ITS CREDIBILITY

RELEASED E-MAIL STRIPS DANISH MERCURY-AUTISM RESEARCH OF IT’S CREDIBILITY

By Ulla Danielsen, journalist, DK-Copenhagen

An e-mail correspondence released through the American Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) shows that 3 Danish autism researchers and an American CDC-employee knew, that autism was still decreasing in Denmark in 2001 following the removal of mercury (Thimerosal) from Danish childhood vaccines in 1992.

However in 2003 the Danish researchers published a paper with quite the opposite message in the journal “Pediatrics.”

The researchers vanquished the problem with the inconvenient Danish 2001-numbers by simply ignoring them in the final version of the published article. That paper did not include any of the 2001-data.

To fabricate epidemiology in such a manner is called an egregious example of scientific misconduct in a complaint to the Secretariat for the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty.

In a letter to Head of Section Dr. Béatrice Sloth, at the secretariat for the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty, the president of Coalition For Mercuryfree Drugs (CoMeD Inc.), reverend Lisa K. Sykes, writes, that the inclusion of this data would have, at a minimum, nullified the conclusions of the paper and could have indeed reversed them, showing a causal relationship between Thimerosal exposure and autism incidence in Denmark.

“The most egregious example of misconduct  was carried out in the data analysis leading to the Madsen et al. (2003) publication. In a Nov. 13, 2002 email correspondence obtained from the CDC via the Freedom of Information Act, Dr. Marlene Lauritsen, co-author of the publication , stated that the autism rates between 1999 and 2001 were actually decreasing” writes Lisa K. Sykes.

The American letter to the Danish authority on scientific fraud continues: “Regarding the autism rates, Dr. Lauritsen stated, “But the incidence and prevalence rates are still decreasing in 2001”.

“These data did not support the assertion of the paper that thimerosal exposure was not causally related to autism. However the final version of the published article did not include any of the 2001 data”, writes Sykes.

The paper in question is “Thimerosal and the occurrence of autism: negative ecological evidence from Danish population-based data” that appeared in the journal Pediatrics in 2003. 

The letter from CoMeD Inc. to the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty is available at the homepage of CoMeD Inc.

It was send from the US to Denmark on September 27, 2011.

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