Poison in our vaccines: investigating mercury, thimerosal, and neurodevelopmental delay. (Health).

Publication: Mothering

Publication Date: 01-NOV-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 Mothering Magazine

More than 60 years ago, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a little-known product, thimerosal, to be used as a preservative. Today, many parents question whether this product is responsible for the current epidemic of children diagnosed with learning disabilities and autism.

Thimerosal

Current thinking suggests that exposure to mercury comes primarily from environmental and dietary sources, dental amalgams, and rare catastrophic events. Recently, however, another common and pervasive source of mercury exposure has been identified. Called thimerosal, it was first approved as an additive by the FDA in the 1930s and has been utilized as a preservative to prevent bacterial contamination in a number of blood and biological products, including vaccines, immune globulins, and over-the-counter eye and nose drops.

The danger thimerosal presents is that it contains 49.5 percent ethyl mercury by weight. Mercury is a potent human toxicant and has long been the source of numerous serious health problems. It is especially toxic to the rapidly developing fetal and infant brain. Federal agencies have published acceptable levels for exposure; but in actual fact, mercury is a poison at any level.

Chemically, thimerosal is a water-soluble, cream-colored crystalline powder. In the human body it is metabolized to ethyl mercury and thiosalicylate. The literature on thimerosal metabolism and excretion is old, and toxicological information is limited. In the past there have been case reports of toxicity and death following inadvertent massive exposures to thimerosal.

The FDA's Discovery

The FDA Modernization Act, signed into law in 1997, included an amendment requiring the agency to compile a list of drugs and foods that contain intentionally introduced mercury compounds and to provide a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the mercury compounds on the list. One may ask why the FDA did not routinely perform this task. The FDA's mission is to ensure purity, safety, potency, and efficacy of individual products, yet such analyses have never been a required part of the permitting process. In its review, which took two years to complete, the FDA...

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