Driving by rote, Ellen headed up the George Washington Parkway toward the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge and D.C. Now a trim, silver-haired sixty-three, she still recalled all too vividly the day just before her fifty-fifth birthday when she went, according to her husband at least, from being "good-looking" to being "a damn fine-looking woman for your age." A year and a half later, Howard had left their twenty-nine-year marriage and run off to be with a thirty-something cocktail waitress he had met during an engineering convention in Vegas.
At the time, it was as if her life, on cruising speed, had hit a brick wall. She accepted an early retirement package from the middle school where she was teaching science, and then effectively pulled down the shades of her existence, shutting herself in and her friends out. Ironically, it was the tragedy surrounding Lucy that pulled her back into the world.
She had always been a positive, upbeat person, but Howard's hurtful and unexpected departure coupled with the end of Lucy's life as a vibrant, healthy child had been a one-two punch that threatened to send her spiraling to the bottom of a Valium bottle. With the help of unrelenting friends and a godsend of a therapist, she gradually opened the blinds again and began putting one foot in front of the other. Now, working out at the gym several times a week, intimately involved in her granddaughter's life, doing volunteer work at PAVE, and functioning as the lone consumer representative on the blue ribbon federal panel evaluating the experimental supervaccine Omnivax, she was running on all cylinders.
Ellen lucked into a parking space not half a block from PAVE headquarters. For a few years after its inception in the mid-eighties, PAVE had been a true grassroots organization, run from the kitchen tables of its two founders — Cheri Sanderson and Sally Lynch, both of whom were convinced that their children had been irreparably damaged by vaccinations. One family at a time, the two mothers discovered they were not alone. And now, through vision, patience, and hard work, PAVE had become a major force, with interest and even some support up to the highest levels of Congress, in addition to tens of thousands of supporting members. The words "Research," "Education," and "Choice," emblazoned on their logo, expressed the agency's goals.
"We are not a bunch of Carrie Nations charging into immunization centers with axes," Cheri had explained during Ellen's first volunteer-orientation session. "But we are tough when we have to be. We will not stop until the powers that be recognize the need for research on the immediate and long-term effects of vaccines, as well as the critical need for public education and ultimately parental choice when it comes to vaccinating our children."
PAVE had its vehement detractors in the scientific, pediatric, infectious disease, and political arenas, but with each passing year, morbidity statistics; clinical disasters; well-attended, PAVE-sponsored scientific conferences; and parents who experienced what they felt certain was a cause-effect relationship between vaccinations and their children's disabilities added to the organization's influence, membership, and war chest.
In the early nineties, the now tax-exempt corporation moved its extensive library, dozens of drawers of case files, seven-person staff, and cadre of committed volunteers to the second floor of a brown-stone on 18th Street between DuPont Circle and Adams-Morgan. Following the disaster with Lucy, Ellen had begun to send in modest donations. Later, she took the intensive workshop for volunteers conducted by Cheri and became qualified to man the phones. Then, a year or so after that, word was passed on to PAVE of the establishment of a consumer seat alongside the scientists and physicians on the federal commission evaluating Omnivax.
Ellen was told by Cheri and Sally that, as a retired middle school science teacher without a track record of militancy and confrontation on the vaccine issue, she would be the perfect person for the job. Ultimately, the powers at the FDA agreed. Ellen suspected that those who offered her the appointment were certain either that she would remain relatively silent, or that the scientists and physicians on the panel could easily preempt her views if they had to. Not that it mattered. She was only one vote out of twenty-three, and support for the megavaccine and its thirty components was overwhelming from the start. Even if she opposed the project, which in fact she did, it was clear from the first meeting of the committee that the final tally would stand at twenty-two to one.
The door to the PAVE offices opened into a crowded work area with half a dozen desks, all manned at the moment. As Ellen stepped into the room, the staff on hand rose as one and applauded. She did her best to wave them all back to their seats, then smiled good-naturedly and bowed. Over the past two-plus years, they had all received frequent briefings of the Omnivax sessions, and at times verbatim transcripts. They had all heard stories of how, armed with epidemiological and research data she had painstakingly accumulated, as well as affidavits from experts supporting the PAVE positions, she had stood up to some of the leading proponents of expanding the scope of immunizations. And as often as not, she seemed to have held her own.
"Please, please," she said, "that's almost enough applause. You there, a little louder, please. Much better. Now, those of you who desire to, and have washed themselves according to my protocol, may come forward, kneel, and kiss my ring."
"Hey, where you been?" Sally Lynch called out from the doorway.
"A little trouble with Lucy at school," Ellen replied. "Nothing serious."
"Well, Cheri's late, too, for a change. She'll be here in a few minutes unless she isn't. She says she has big news for us."
In her mid-forties, Sally, tall, dark-haired, and businesslike, was more introspective and far less flamboyant than her co-director. It was a perfect match — one working behind the scenes, the other in front of the cameras, yet both possessing a high degree of intelligence, compassion, and drive. If Sally had a shortcoming, it was her extreme intensity, which sometimes clouded her judgment and at other times overwhelmed her patience. But that ferocious commitment was understandable. Within hours of receiving his routine vaccination shot, her six-month-old son, Ian, developed a temperature of over 106, had a seizure, and died. Just like that.
Sally's office was as well organized and neat as Cheri Sanderson's was cluttered. On one wall was a professionally made, three-foot-square, multicolored graph showing that the number of autistic children seeking state services in California more than doubled in the eighties and nearly quadrupled in the nineties. The other walls were covered with dozens of framed photographs, most of them of autistic children, whose condition, their parents were certain, was caused by vaccinations. One of the photos, an eight-by-ten directly behind Sally's desk, was of Lucy. Tucked into the corner of the frame was a heartbreaking snapshot of the girl on a swing, taken a few weeks before her catastrophic transformation.
"Coffee?" Sally offered.
"No thanks. I'm already buzzed."
"So, in a few more days it's over," Sally said, referring to the impending commission vote on Omnivax — the subject of this morning's meeting of the three of them.
"So I hear."
"Any headway?"
"You mean in changing votes? What do you think?"
Sally slammed her fist on the desk.
"Gosh, but this whole Omnivax business is frustrating," she said. "Look at this, Ellen, look. It's a research report put out by Congress. Congress! Vaccine Controversies.' Can you imagine? At last they're asking questions. All of a sudden, they care. Here, check this out. All the drug manufacturers are being required by the FDA and EPA to remove mercury from their childhood vaccines. Do you know how many millions of kids got shot up before anyone even thought to take a look at the mercury situation? Here, look, DPT and polio vaccines modified; rotavirus anti-diarrhea vaccine recalled because of infant bowel injury and deaths; hepatitis B vaccine being re-examined. Ellen, the Omnivax forces can't be allowed to win."