As corporate relations manager, Rachel Rivest Dunbar is the main liaison between The Heartland Institute and its more than 60 corporate supporters.
Before joining Heartland in May 2010 as development assistant, Dunbar was the annual giving coordinator for Shimer College in Chicago, Illinois, and a supervisor for Michigan State University’s Telemarketing Program in East Lansing, Michigan. She received her B.A. degree in chemistry from Michigan State University and conducted medicinal chemistry research under Dr. Rawle Hollingsworth, Afid Therapeutics, Inc. during her senior year.
NOTE: by the American Council on Science and Health.
Andrew Wakefield, the original architect of the phony autism-vaccine scare, has had the chutzpah to file a defamation suit against the journal BMJ, its editor, and a journalist for printing a scathing series of articles last January that attacked him for the ethical flaws in his retracted paper.
In fact, the journal and the writer didn’t stop at that accusation. After comparing Wakefield’s own documents with the published study, they discovered discrepancies between Wakefield’s results and the actual medical histories of the children involved, that bordered on fraud. The articles also suggested that Wakefield deliberately altered facts about the patients’ records in order to support his conclusion, additionally noting that he had financial ties to lawyers aiming to sue vaccine producers.
Back in 1998, Wakefield published a study in The Lancet claiming the childhood MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccination caused symptoms of autism in 12 children. Although those versed in the scientific method roundly criticized the obvious flaws in the study when it first appeared, The Lancet’s editor, Dr. Richard Horton, justified its publication as a “stimulant for debate.” Although the co-authors denounced the study when they learned the facts of Wakefield’s manipulations and ethical lapses, it tookThe Lancet until 2010 to officially retract this flawed study.
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Environmental advocacy groups such as the Safe States Alliance, the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, and the Interstate Chemicals Clearinghouse, are pushing states to enact legislation to create “chemicals of concern” lists. What these lists do is target chemicals widely used in industry for what will be unnecessary, and cost-heavy regulations.
For the simple cost to society in the form of lost jobs, higher consumer prices, and diminished product effectiveness, your child can be safe from chemical substances such as silicone. The same inert, low-toxic silicone that has been in production and played a major role in many industries for generations. While it is important that the most vulnerable members of society are safe from harm, there needs to be a clear, precise limit to how far government can intervene in between the chemical elements that make up the world around us.
Instead of basing regulation policy on hypothetical risk deduced from biomonitoring, they should based on real epidemiological research that passes the quality standards set by the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. This should be followed up with strict cost-benefit and comparative risk analyses so appropriate legislative action can be taken if needed at all. This will reduce unnecessary burdens placed on the economy while more efficiently protecting society from unintended harm.
By Taylor Smith, special legislative-development intern at The Heartland Institute.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is out of control. Beyond the typical FDA reforms of getting drugs to patients faster, the FDA should reform its scare-tactic policies.
On a recent trip to California, The Heartland Institute’s Amanda Evans took a picture of a popular sign demonizing acrylamide (right), a chemical commonly found in food and drinks after heating or cooking.
Like so many government agencies, the FDA is missing the big picture: everything can be toxic at a high dose. Water. The Sun. Chocolate. We must remember the FDA, EPA, and other agencies uses higher than normal exposure doses of chemicals on rats to determine toxicity to humans. A detailed explanation of this by the University of California at Berkeley is here.
Rich Trzupek, a policy advisor at The Heartland Institute, has written extensively on toxicity and dosage scares. His books can be found here, here, and here. Rich was recently featured in a Fox News video here.
Yesterday, Heartland’s Dr. Richard Dolinar and Kendall Antekeier were featured in a Forbes.com article by Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and Jeff Stier, a senior fellow and director for the Risk Analysis Division at the National Center for Public Policy Research.
Miller and Stier give a thorough account of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new egalitarian and costly decision making process to determine additions to the childhood immunization schedule, including a new meningitis vaccine for infants.
“What has changed since the CDC made elimination of the meningococcal disease a priority in 1999? For one thing, the federal government’s increasing involvement in health care. Every decision made about which vaccine is recommended has a financial component that concerns government officials. According to CDC officials and experts working with the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the CDC group that will make a recommendation on the meningitis vaccine, “cost-effectiveness, not just science” will be considered in the decision making process.”
The more government annexes health care policy decisions, the more it dissociates taxpayers from their health care choices. Using cost-effectiveness instead of science to determine health policies is bad for taxpayers and is bad health policy. (Click here to read the full article.)
For more information on this topic, click here to view a recent Policy Tip Sheet from The Heartland Institute. Additional information on consumer health care choices, visit http://heartland.org/issues/health-care.
Heartland releases new Infant Meningitis Vaccine Policy Tip Sheet!
Today in Shoreline, Washington, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), and The Keystone Center are meeting again in part two of a four-city series of community engagement meetings to examine the childhood immunization schedule and adding the infant meningococcal vaccine to it. The reason for this divergence from the CDC’s normal approval process: cost-effectiveness.
The remaining two meetings will be held in Chicago, Illinois, and Denver, Colorado, on Thursday, July 21, and Monday, July 25, respectively. Meeting and sign-up information is below. Please note only individuals local to the area or state will be allowed to participate in the meetings. If you plan on attending let us know! We would like to advertise health care and policy experts in attendance to media and allies.
Chicago, IL Thursday, July 21, 2011 at the Holiday Inn Chicago O’Hare, 5615 North Cumberland Avenue, Chicago, IL. http://keystone.org/registration/chicago
Denver, CO Monday, July 25, 2011 at the Children’s Hospital Colorado, Mt. Yale Conference Room, 13123 E. 16th Avenue, Aurora, CO. http://keystone.org/registration/july25denver
For more information on meningococcal disease, visit: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/vis/downloads/vis-mening.pdf or www.cdc.gov.
Next week in Concord, New Hampshire, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), and The Keystone Center will kick off a four-city series of “community engagement meetings” to examine adding the infant meningococcal vaccine to the childhood vaccine schedule. The reason for this divergence from the CDC’s normal approval process: cost-effectiveness.
If the CDC does not add the meningococcal vaccine to the childhood schedule, it would be the first time in history a Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved vaccine was excluded. It would also be the first use of cost-effectiveness analysis under Obamacare.
As Benjamin Domenech, managing editor of The Heartland Institute’s Health Care News, stated in his May 23 Washington Examiner piece, “Whether this vaccine is added to the infant schedule or not, for ACIP not to at least partially recommend a vaccine whose safety has been endorsed by the FDA makes for a dangerous precedent. It would be a sign that decisions about such vaccines will now be made by those with green eyeshades, not stethoscopes.”
The CDC should return to its mission of disease prevention and let an FDA-approved drug into the market for parents and doctors to decide their children’s care.
To attend the New Hampshire meeting, register at http://keystone.org/registration/concord.
