Feb 3, 2007

A mother's battle against mercury
By TONY HOLT
wholt@hernandotoday.com


SPRING HILL — Mikey was oblivious to the racket coming from the other side of the glass a few inches from his face.
His mother, Barbara Lupo, had parked her car in the parking lot of the Spring Hill Wal-Mart and had walked to the rear passenger side door. She playfully tapped on the window to get Mikey to laugh.

But Mikey did not react. He did not even turn his head. Lupo knocked again and again, each time banging the glass harder with her knuckles while screaming Mikey’s name.

She unbuckled her 15-month-old son, pulled him out of the car, held him in her arms and tried to establish eye contact, but he was unresponsive.

“I was a panicked wreck,” Lupo said. “It’s like he had lost his personality.”

The abrupt change in Mikey’s behavior, his mother said, occurred less than 24 hours after he had been given his immunizations for the measles, mumps, rubella and Hepatitis B.

At the time, she thought something was wrong with his hearing. She called her husband and the two decided he should go to a Tampa-area clinic for some tests.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God, he is going to need a hearing aid for the rest of his life,’” Lupo recalled. “Now I wish that was all he would have needed.”

After medical specialists discovered nothing wrong with his hearing, Lupo took her son to three different physicians seeking answers. Three months after his vaccinations, he was diagnosed with autism and mental retardation.

Lupo disputes the latter diagnosis, based on her son’s development. He is 10 years old and is functioning better than most expected, she said. He has an acute sense of direction, can read at a rudimentary level and can safely ride a bike.

Mikey is also drawn to more hands-on activities that require tools. Earlier this week, his mother took him shopping at a local hardware store. They walked out carrying nearly $70 worth of items.

“Trust me, it wasn’t funny,” Lupo said with a heavy dose of dry humor. “My husband wanted to kill me afterwards.”

In spite of his improvements, Mikey’s autism remains a significant handicap. The most obvious signs of his disorder occur daily. His behavior can change in a matter of seconds, from mild-mannered to ferocious.

His tantrums involve more than screaming and crying. Mikey is a bulky child who could easily injure anyone who gets in the way of his flailing arms and balled fists.

Lupo has suffered from dislocated shoulders, a dislocated wrist and a dislocated hip while trying to calm her son during his frenzies.

“He’s strong as an ox when he has those rages,” she said.

One day last month, Lupo was in the front yard with Mikey trying to keep him occupied with an outdoor light she had bought for him at the Home Depot. He wanted to hang it in his room. His mother was tightening a screw, trying to attach the base of the light to a small square of dry wall, but was having difficulty.

Mikey grew impatient. He immediately snapped into another tantrum, shaking his head back and forth and screaming at the top of his lungs. Spittle was flying out of his mouth. He raised his hands over his head and it looked like he was about to slam his fists downward, but Lupo did not flinch.

She sat inches away from him, glared at him with a stern look on her face said, “Listen to me. No, don’t do that. Daddy will be home soon.”

Mikey looked into his mother’s eyes and settled down. He still had saliva on his chin.

“Wipe your mouth please,” Lupo said.

Mikey brought his arm to his face and wiped his chin with the sleeve of his sweatshirt.


Preparing for vaccine court
Most of Lupo’s efforts center on two goals — providing for her three children, namely Mikey, and making sure the latter is financially set for the remainder of his life.

Not long after she learned Mikey had autism, she discovered there were legions of parents like her whose children showed severe neurological symptoms after receiving their vaccinations. They were convinced their children were poisoned by the mercury-filled preservative, known as thimerosal, formerly an ingredient in childhood vaccines.

Lupo joined the fight. She and her husband filed a federal petition, along with nearly 5,000 other parents, seeking a monetary settlement.

The cases are heard by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, created by Congress in 1982. It specializes in vaccine-related cases and is commonly known as “vaccine court.”

Lupo’s attorney, John Clark, of the Ferrero Law Firm in Miami, said the number of petitioners would have been significantly higher had it not been for the court’s “onerous statute of limitations.”

“These parents must go before the court within three years of the first sign of the first symptom, which is rather hard to do,” Clark said. “A lot of these parents and children were locked out.”

Mikey Lupo is 10 years old. He was diagnosed with autism at 18 months. Barbara Lupo filed before the statute of limitations expired — a clear sign of how much time it takes for one case to go through the process.

Clark’s firm represents 65 petitioners, but the upcoming “causation hearing,” scheduled for June, will affect all of the petitioners’ cases.

“The catch is, there has never been any (scientific) connection between vaccines and autism,” Clark admitted.

In spite of the lack of evidence, there are several medical experts, as well as parents, who have surmised beyond a reasonable doubt that thimerosal causes autism.

Insurance companies have accumulated a vast database consisting of reports of adverse reactions to vaccines. Whenever a parent complains his or her child has shown symptoms from a vaccine, it is added to the records.

As of now, that database has been off limits. Attorneys for the petitioners thus far have been barred from accessing them, Clark said.

“We need to get our experts to get their hands on that information and crunch the numbers,” he said.

The government has said it does not have the authority to grant access because the database belongs to the insurance companies.

Attorneys argue the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services does have the authority, and moral obligation, to release the records, Clark said.

The decision on whether those records can be accessed will be made by a special master, the vaccine court equivalent to a judge. The case would be greatly impacted if the database made available to the petitioners’ lawyers, Clark said.

Either way, causation needs to be established in order for the cases to go forward. If the special master rules in favor of the defendants, or respondents, then no monetary settlement can be sought by Lupo or any of the other petitioners.

“If that happens, then it’s going to be squashed,” Clark explained. “If there is no way to prove the connection (between vaccines and autism), then we are not eligible for compensation. That won’t stop anyone from filing a civil suit, but the standards are tougher there.

“A lot of families’ hopes are riding on what happens in June,” he said.


No proof, yet no more mercury
The best-case scenario for the Lupo family is a $250,000 settlement. That is the maximum amount given to a petitioner who wins a liability case in vaccine court.

For every vaccine purchased since that time, Clark said, a tiny portion of the money went into a pot. Over the years, the dollar amount has grown well into the billions.

The pot was intended to be the source of money that gets dispersed to those who are ultimately injured by vaccines, Clark said. Instead of suing pharmaceutical companies, the parents of the sick children are supposed to take their cases to vaccine court. If they win, they are awarded money from the pot.

Some families have more grandiose hopes and have filed civil suits. Those court battles may be more difficult to win, but the rewards are much higher, Clark said.

Some think if a judge ruled in favor of the plaintiff in a vaccine case, it would make the tobacco company settlements from more than a decade ago seem paltry by comparison. Furthermore, if pharmaceutical companies were found liable of poisoning children with mercury, the monetary result would have a gargantuan effect on the U.S. economy. That gives the federal government a serious motive to prevent civil suits from going forward, critics have said.

One of the leading crusaders in the fight against pharmaceutical companies and their alleged government conspirators is Rep. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., D-N.J.

He has accused the government of covering up “damaging data” connecting thimerosal to autism.

Kennedy said a group of government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting in June 2000 in Norcross, Ga., to discuss the data.

In a 2005 published report entitled, “Deadly Immunity,” Kennedy accusatorily wrote, “many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry’s bottom line.”

Referring to a transcript of the meeting, he quoted a doctor who said, “We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits.”

Pressure had already been mounting against the government to remove mercury from vaccines. In spite of no medical proof of the link between thimerosal and autism (an extensive study was conducted by the Institute of Medicine, the results of which were published in 2004) mercury was pulled out of all childhood vaccines by 2002. A voluntary recall of the original vaccines was implemented. Many pediatric offices still administered thimerosal-filled shots during the next two years.

Today, only flu and tetanus shots contain thimerosal, according to the Food and Drug Administration. The latter is only administered to those ages 7 and older.


Holistic physician versus anthropology professor, author
Dr. David Berger, a holistic pediatrician out of Tampa who specializes in treatment for autism-related disorders, said the proper research has not been done on thimerosal. He is convinced previous studies were too broad.

He thinks there is a biological explanation as to why certain children who have been injected with thimerosal have acquired autistic symptoms.

The human body, Berger said, contains a protein that is used for the detoxification of potentially hazardous substances, such as mercury or other metals.

If a protein-deficient child is injected with thimerosal, then he or she is more likely to develop autism, he said.

“In my heart of hearts, I think there was something to it,” he said. “I talk quite frequently about this.”

Many local parents of autistic children have consulted Berger in spite of their HMOs not covering visits to holistic physicians. Because autistic children require more medical care, an appointment with such a doctor could cost them thousands of dollars.

Many physicians, like Berger, are sold on the alleged link between mercury and autism. Others are not.

There are those who emphatically deny there is an epidemic in the first place.

According to Dr. Roy Grinker, a professor of anthropology at George Washington University and author of “Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism,” the rise in autism diagnoses is the result of an enhanced knowledge of the disorder on the part of the medical community. He compares the recent spike in autism numbers to those for depression, Alzheimer’s disease, fetal alcohol syndrome, melanoma and breast cancer.

“To argue that an increase in the numbers of people classified in school or public health care assistance records is evidence of a true rise in autism would be like arguing that the increase in successful coffee houses like Starbucks is by itself proof of an increase in the number of coffee drinkers in the U.S.,” he said.

Berger scoffed at Grinker’s theory.

“If you have ever spent five seconds with a child, you know he is autistic,” Berger said. “Autism is so obvious. Were these symptoms showing up with the same frequency in kids 10 years ago? Absolutely not.

“There is no way we went one in 10,000 children (with autism) 10 years ago to one in 166 just on better diagnosis,” he continued. “I don’t see how that’s possible.”

“Dr. Berger’s answer is an answer from the gut,” Grinker said of Berger’s reaction. “It feels like an epidemic. It really does ... (but) just because something feels like an epidemic, it doesn’t mean there is one. Science has not found that there is a true increase in autism.”

Grinker has his own personal connection to the subject. His 15-year-old daughter is autistic.


Debate rages on
“Everyone is entitled to their opinion,” Lupo said of Grinker.

When told the professor has an autistic daughter, the outspoken mother remained steadfast.

“I don’t care if he has 10 autistic kids, he wasn’t there when my son changed overnight,” Lupo said. “Everybody who knew Mikey saw it.”

Had Clark overheard the conversation, he would not have been surprised by Lupo’s reaction to Grinker’s conclusion. He has gotten to know her well in the seven years he has handled her case.

“There have always been those deniers who say ‘it’s not so until you prove it to me,’” Clark said. “Then there are those parents who know they had happy, healthy and normal children until they took these vaccines. There will be no convincing them otherwise.”

Grinker, who has received scads of hate mail since his book was published, said he is perplexed at the number of parents who are invested in the belief there is an autism epidemic.

“I think the media are to blame, in part,” Grinker said. “I also blame scientists for not speaking out enough. They are scared because autism is such a sensitive topic.”

His critics point to the relatively low number of adults with autism, but Grinker again was dismissive. So many autistic adults were misdiagnosed as children, so unbeknownst to most of society, “they are living all around us,” he said.

“An autistic person can make a tremendous amount of progress,” Grinker said.

That is the one opinion of Grinker’s that sits well with Lupo.

“I definitely know we’ve come a long way with Mikey,” she said. “He knows how to wash his hair. He cleans up his room. He knows when he comes home to take off his shoes. He knows to put his dirty clothes away.

“I’ve seen so much progress,” Lupo said, stressing the amount of effort she and her husband have put forth to make their son’s life easier. “He’s going to be a successful member of society even if it kills me.”


Reporter Tony Holt can be contacted at 352-544-5283.

This story can be found at: http://www.hernandotoday.com/MGBE2H8MQXE.html

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