Scott Gottlieb
[2009 Nov] Rat On a Hot Tin Plate: New Evidence
Shows Ethyl Mercury from Vaccines Causes Abnormal Brain Development in Infants
By Mark Blaxill As we enter the heart of flu season, industry pressure
to rehabilitate thimerosal (the ethyl mercury-based vaccine preservative) has
been escalating. Just last week, The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion
piece blaming swine flu vaccine shortages on the demand for mercury-free
formulations. According to the author, venture capitalist Scott Gottlieb, one of
the main reasons you can’t get the swine flu vaccine is that the Obama
administration has been “too cautious” in managing vaccine safety. He blamed
three “fateful policy decisions” for restricting swine flu production, one of
which was that “the government demanded single-dose syringes because they
contain smaller amounts of thimerosal than multi-dose vials.” According to
Gottlieb, “This mercury-containing vaccine preservative continues to stir
concern it can trigger childhood autism, even though this has been firmly
disproven.”
Coming from Gottlieb, this argument should be taken with a
grain of salt (Gottlieb has acknowledged relevant conflicts. As a former FDA
official in the Bush administration, see
(HERE), he had
to recuse himself from decisions involving Eli Lilly drug approvals; Eli Lilly
sponsored research led to the invention of thimerosal). But Gottlieb was merely
the point man for a commonly held view in the vaccine and medical industries.
And over the last few months the vaccine industry has shifted their promotional
activities into overdrive, eagerly exploiting the opportunity to market the
novel threat of the swine flu. In the process they have bundled their full
throttle marketing of flu vaccines with a renewed push to eliminate what they
see as unnecessary obstacles to flu vaccine production (what others might call
prudent product safety measures).
[2007] From Wall Street to the FDA to Off-Label Drug Huckster for Lilly. The Strange Career of Scott Gottlieb By MARTHA ROSENBERG As critics feared, soon after assuming the number two FDA position, Gottlieb had to recuse himself from resource planning for a possible bird flu epidemic because of financial ties to Roche and Sanofi-Aventis. He also had to bow out of work related to Eli Lilly, Proctor & Gamble and five other drug companies......Now that he's left the FDA, Gottlieb is helping sell Lilly's osteoporosis drug Evista which the company was convicted in 2005 of marketing, off label, for anti cancer and heart disease purposes.