The Hits just keep on coming

We've taken some hits from the usual detractors with the fallout from Salon.com's and Rolling Stone's publication of RFK, Jr's "Deadly Immunity" article.
Below is my response to some rather critical words from a surgeon who mans Orac Knows blog.

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As one physician to another, please take a few moments and review this information. This is your blog and your right to freedom of speech and self realized ideas are important. Please indulge my “quote mining”, but In your information section about your blog you wrote: “…I hope to base my opinions and ramblings on facts, but to remain respectful of other viewpoints.”

You stated in a recent blog regarding the Robert Kennedy, Jr. article in Salon.com: “…the preparation of the article was heavily influenced by an antivaccination activist. Gee, why am I not surprised to learn this? Why didn't Salon.com just let Lujene Clark write the article?”

I believe your goal here is to have the correct facts. After all, “a statement of fact cannot be insolent” (unless the fact is incorrect and appears to be ad hominem).

I am familiar with *the facts* since Lujene Clark is my wife. Firstly, she is not an “antivaccination activist”. She does promote safer vaccines. Putting a known neurotoxin in a vaccine could be construed by some as an unsafe practice. Others will have different opinions.

Secondly, she did not write anything for RFK, Jr. or Salon.com. She was asked to fact check some information contained in the article and she requested that Salon.com double check her “checks.” That’s a nice touch often missing in journalism these days. My wife abhors writing anything (but she could if she wanted to).

Nor did she ask to be interviewed for the magazine. They called her while we were traveling by car to New York City to help set up therapy for friends with a severely mercury damaged child – a precious boy who had lost all speech and language at age 3 after a mercury containing flu shot.

I suspect many physicians, like you and I, might be in denial at the thought of inadvertently poisoning an entire generation of children. It’s not our fault. We were misled and we did what we thought was best for our patients.

We aren’t advocates for money (we accept no funds). Nor have we filed any lawsuits. Our efforts are really a labor of love and we have tried hard to remain in the anonymous background unless telling our story serves to educate or inspire others.

As a physician and a physician educator for 30 years, please allow me to tell my story.

Our son was 7 1/2 years old when he reached his “toxic tipping point” with mercury after he received two doses of Thimerosal-containing influenza vaccine in November 2002 and December 2002 (approximately 30 days apart per the ACIP/CDC guidelines). Within a matter of weeks he experienced dramatic changes...he suffered severe neurodevelopmental changes, neurobehavioral symptoms, exacerbated allergies, asthma, eczema, etc.

Within 10 months, he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. Only when we identified mercury as the culprit and started to remove the heavy metal from his system, did he begin to recover.

As a "mainstream" physician all these years, this seemed to go against all my "conventional" training and was outside the realm of my previous standard of practice. I sought additional training with heavy emphasis on environmental medicine and spent many hours speaking with researchers and clinicians familiar with mercury toxicity and its biomedical symptoms. I shared this knowledge and research with my son's health care team (pediatrician and endocrinologist) and we implemented these new modalities into his treatment protocol. As I stated previously, only then did my son begin to improve.

If it was not mercury causing his problems then what would explain his dramatic improvement when we addressed the mercury issue. Do not make the mistake of thinking there is “no credible scientific evidence” of how and why this is true. There is a plethora of peer-reviewed scientific studies published over the last 50 years that mercury and specifically, Thimerosal (49.6% ethyl mercury by weight) is genotoxic (damages DNA), nephrotoxic (damages kidneys), immunotoxic (damages the immune system), cytotoxic (causes cell death), cardiotoxic (damages the heart), thyrotoxic (damages the thyroid) and neurotoxic (damages the neurological system).

Many of the biological mechanisms for the damage caused by Thimerosal have been identified. Thanks to numerous studies published within the last few years, we have a better understanding of why some children are more susceptible than others. Thanks to several studies published in the last two years we can better understand why and how these new treatment protocols help many of these children achieve dramatic improvements, for example the use of methylcobalamin injections (also known as methyl B12). This is no longer a scientific debate…just check Pub Med. The studies are there much to the dismay of public health officials and vaccine manufacturers. They continue to hope that denial will make this public relations nightmare go away.

Until October 2003, I, too, was “blissfully ignorant” of the acute toxicity of Thimerosal much like most other physicians. We were never told our son’s vaccines contained mercury, a known neurotoxin, in levels that exceeded EPA safety guidelines. It never occurred to us to ask. Because of my medical background, I thought physicians could trust the CDC, the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry. I must hope that no one else should reach this epiphany at so high a price.

Please take a few minutes an carefully review the full text scientific publications available at http://www.NoMercury.org/science.htm.


Alan Clark, M.D.

"When a man who is honestly mistaken, hears the truth, he will either cease being mistaken or cease being honest." Anon