Postpone the February 9, 2004, Institute of Medicine (IOM) Immunization Safety Review Committee meeting. Pressing forward . . . will further undermine the credibility of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on matters of vaccine safety. . . The proposed date of this meeting . . . is in the best interests of no one who is seeking the truth about a possible association between vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism.

Recent actions and statements by officials within the CDC's National Immunization Program (NIP) office, the timing of the IOM meeting, and the agenda for the IOM meeting raise serious questions. . . .

NIP is engaged in what amounts to an investigation of their own actions . . .

Actions of the CDC regarding their November 3, 2003, article in Pediatrics raise serious concerns about the objectivity of the CDC's top vaccine safety officials and the value of their input on this issue. They are the very ones driving the IOM meeting and agenda.

On the day the Pediatrics study was released, a top CDC researcher and a coauthor of the study was quick to declare in news articles that appeared across this nation, "The final results of the study show no statistical association between thimerosal vaccines and harmful health outcomes in children, in particular autism and attention-deficit disorder."

Unfortunately, the study does nothing of the sort, and when called to account eight weeks later, this CDC official was forced to recant. When asked if the children in the study were too young to have received an autism diagnosis, this coauthor stated that yes they were too young. He went on to admit that the study also likely mislabeled young autistic children as having other disabilities thus masking the number of children with autism.

There are a host of other flaws in the study . . .

Perhaps officials within the NIP manipulated data to "disprove" a theory they find objectionable. A review of the NIP's July 2000 Simpsonwood meeting, the various iterations of the Pediatrics study, and internal e-mails appear to give support to this claim.

In his December 17, 2003, letter to Pediatrics, Dr. Neal Halsey outlined a number of concerns about the study. Furthermore, in extensive discussions my staff has held with the CDC, your staff made it clear that the CDC will not hand over - to already approved independent researchers - the raw data used by CDC in developing the Pediatrics study. CDC is providing only limited access to the altered data. . . .

Research that has been conducted to date by the NIP seems to be tainted by a desire to disprove a theory that they find objectionable. . . .

The agenda set forth in the meeting is inadequate and incomplete. . . . Witnesses are woefully inadequate . . . It does not appear to be a serious effort to examine these critical issues.