New York bans mercury in vaccines

[theearthisround]

http://www.in-pharmatechnologist.com/news/news-ng.asp?n=60916-new-york-bans

Thimerosal, a preservative used in vaccines that contains 50 per cent ethyl mercury, has been used in vaccines for years as a preservative to help prevent life-threatening bacterial contamination. However, vaccine manufacturing technology has advanced in recent years, and it is no longer necessary to add preservatives containing mercury to vaccines, according to the bill’s sponsor, Sen Dean Skelos.

"Childhood vaccinations have had a significant and measurable public health benefit," said Sen Skelos. "But with scientific uncertainty regarding the safety of the mercury-based preservative thimerosal to children, readily available alternatives and a consensus between the major federal health agencies that thimerosal use should be reduced or eliminated, we must err on the side of caution and end its use in New York State.

The bill has now been passed on to Governor George Pataki for signature.

--------
Vaccine manufacturers say that as of 2000, vaccines recommended for use in children and infants have all been available in versions that contain no (‘thiomersal-free’) or only trace amounts (‘thiomersal preservative-free’) of the compound, with the exception of some multidose vials intended for use in the developing world. This is because where several doses are taken from the same container, thiomersal offers better protection from contamination than other preservatives such as 2-phenoxy ethanol, according to the World Health Organisation.

[whistle]

1. Do autistic infants have high levels of mercury in their bodies...

...in other words are these infants affected by mercury poisoning? Just wondering if science backs up the claims.

[Kraklen]

2. No, science doesn't back up the claims.

but if they can find a different preservative for vaccines I don't see why not a change.

[HuckleB]

3. 'Xactly.

[whistle]

4. Why not just throw away old vaccines and eliminate using....

...preservatives at all? You know, organic vaccines, fresh

[Kraklen]

6. Why can fruits and vegetables?

Why not pluck them off the tree year round? Who needs to preserve?

[Flint-oid]

8. Science does support this, but the data was kept secret

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote a tremendous piece based on information recently released through a FOIA.

...The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children...

[Kraklen]

9. Stuff of tinfoil hats.

Not science.

[K-W]

11. After considering Kennedy's argument, and your argument.

Im going to go with Kennedy, lets get some answers.

[Kraklen]

14. You're right, family of famous politicians aren't pseudoscientists.

Here's an idea. How about looking at the science.

[smartvoter]

23. You aren't addressing any of this. We know there are studies linking them

and at least RFK Jr. offers evidence. In your case, you are just taking shots.

Make a case, if you have one.

[Pachamama]

28. How about talking to parents of Autistic kids & asking them when it all

began? Might not be scientific, but no one knows better than parents when changes occurred...I personally have witnessed it in 3 vsituations where seemingly healthy children "changed, in many cases almost overnight following a series of vaccinations w/ vaccines containing Thimersol...coincidink? well those parents don't think so and same for 100's of thousands of parents of autistic children who have witnessed similar changes....

[Flint-oid]

16. U of Texas said the link is possible

see here

[HuckleB]

That study isn't about vaccines, however.

[smartvoter]

21. The meeting transcript clearly shows

concern. From RFK Jr.'s interview regarding the transcript:

"There are scientists there from the government who are saying — who are reading the reports and saying, this is undeniable. There's no way we can ever deny this. I am not going to give this to my children..."

What exactly is your position on this, and why?

I'm not being combative. I am open to all sides of these things. But I'm not seeing a foundation for what you are saying. Could you explain?

[earth mom]

26. Bullshit!-Let's see some "science" done by unbiased independent scientists

instead of scientists bought and paid for by the pharma giants! And I'm talking about ones that work for government agencies as well. No doubt they WILL find that the pharma giants poisoned these children! :grr:

[rox63]

5. It may be a matter of when, not how much

The mercury connection to autism may have more to do with the stage of brain development when the mercury is introduced, rather than how much. These vaccines are given to babies and toddlers, whose brains are in a stage of rapid development. We probably get more mercury from eating fish as an adult than there is in the vaccines. But we are also well past the stage of major brain/neural development.

[CHIMO]

7. Deadly Immunity

Deadly Immunity
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. investigates the government cover-up of a mercury/autism scandal

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private invitations to fifty-two attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7395411?rnd=1120071029469&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.1040

The scientific connection. Fairly lengthy article.
Of course there are still some that claim there is no scientific proof for global warming.

[Igel]

15. This would be the coverup that involved carefully collecting

all the copies of the report ... and prior to the official release of the report a couple weeks later ... back in 2000?

Somehow, shouting "coverup" in 2005 over a report's holdup by two weeks 5 years before seems a bit disingenuous.

[CHIMO]

17. The Article

Mentions the studies relating mercury to the illness.

One would have to go directly to the studies to get the data. They are mentioned in the article.

It is not the fact that the release was delayed but that the relationship between mercury and the illness is pointed out.

[Igel]

27. The Pediatrics article

that contains the errata might also be of interest: it's mostly criticism of the process by which the drug companies deal with hushing up complaints.

[CHIMO]

30. Read The

Kennedy article mentioning the manipulation. Went to the Pediatrics site and searched for "mercury" and found over 200 items. A bit too much to filter through.

My take is that there is sufficient information from this article alone, presuming that the references are correct, to make the assumption between cause and effect for mercury. If one wants more proof that there is not some other lurking variable then it should still be banned until an independent study, that is peer reviewed, proves the cause and effect relationship or disproves it.

I have heard at least two programs that Kennedy did on Ring of Fire on the effects of mercury. There seems to be more than sufficient evidence to conclude a negative effect from mercury.

[Igel]

31. The problem is that you don't so much prove things as

disprove them. Given a correlation between a possible cause X and a result, you don't know if X caused Y, something caused X and Y, or if X and Y are independent.

You can run the stats, but stats are used when there's imperfect knowledge. Many an analysis has proven wrong when an additional variable's introduced. And in this, there are many variables, and it's looking more and more like the correlation's spurious in the US.

[Junkdrawer]

22. RFK Jr. posted an answer to this and other criticisms at Salon...

....
To Mr. Kirchheimer's other points: The way I used the Clements quote did not change its meaning. I regret that two sentences of the quote were inadvertently transposed. The papers discussed at Simpsonwood were clearly embargoed –- Verstraeten's paper was stamped "Do not copy or reproduce" on every page –- and there's no evidence that the material was actually released two weeks later. Again, it's a matter of interpretation how much of the time spent at Simpsonwood was devoted to advancing scientific inquiry and how much to "handling" Verstraeten's troubling data. History has proven the CDC was more interested in making the data "go away" than getting to the bottom of it.
...
http://www.salon.com/news/letters/2005/06/25/thimerosal/index.html

[Igel]

24. If I may use the same weasel-verbiage ...

There's not a claim that they extensively sought evidence.

I have many a ms that has "do not reproduce" and "not for citation" on it, and haven't bothered to check to make sure they were published.

In any event, I suspect that he wasn't happy with it after his bashing (it probably wouldn't have passed review), and the results were folded into this:

Verstraeten Thomas; Davis Robert L; DeStefano Frank; Lieu Tracy A; Rhodes Philip H; Black Steven B; Shinefield Henry; Chen Robert T; Vaccine Safety Datalink Team.
Safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines: a two-phased study of computerized health maintenance organization databases. Pediatrics. 2003 Nov; 112 (5): 1039-48.
ABST: OBJECTIVE: To assess the possible toxicity of thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCVs) among infants. METHODS: A 2-phased retrospective cohort study was conducted using computerized health maintenance organization (HMO) databases. Phase I screened for associations between neurodevelopmental disorders and thimerosal exposure among 124 170 infants who were born during 1992 to 1999 at 2 HMOs (A and B). In phase II, the most common disorders associated with exposure in phase I were reevaluated among 16 717 children who were born during 1991 to 1997 in another HMO (C). Relative risks for neurodevelopmental disorders were calculated per increase of 12.5 micro g of estimated cumulative mercury exposure from TCVs in the first, third, and seventh months of life. RESULTS: In phase I at HMO A, cumulative exposure at 3 months resulted in a significant positive association with tics (relative risk : 1.89; 95% confidence interval : 1.05-3.38). At HMO B, increased risks of language delay were found for cumulative exposure at 3 months (RR: 1.13; 95% CI: 1.01-1.27) and 7 months (RR: 1.07; 95% CI: 1.01-1.13). In phase II at HMO C, no significant associations were found. In no analyses were significant increased risks found for autism or attention-deficit disorder. CONCLUSIONS: No consistent significant associations were found between TCVs and neurodevelopmental outcomes. Conflicting results were found at different HMOs for certain outcomes. For resolving the conflicting findings, studies with uniform neurodevelopmental assessments of children with a range of cumulative thimerosal exposures are needed.

So his results were covered up until 2003. I stand corrected.

[Junkdrawer]

25. And by then, the author moved from CDC to GlaxoSmithKline....

...

In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the damage than at protecting children's health. The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been "lost" and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.

....

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7395411?rnd=1120071029469&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.1040

[Moderator]

10. Article dated 6-27

[Ilsa]

12. Good for them. I have an autistic son, and mercury may be totally

unrelated, but NO ONE should want thimerosal injected into their bodies, whether it is related to developmental disabilities or not.

"Just the vax, ma'am, hold the mercury."

[HuckleB]

13. When it comes to etiology, the avenues appear nearly endless.

This page links to reports on dozens of research projects looking into genetic and environmental links to autism. And it's just a start:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newssearch.php

[HuckleB]

18. Autism research 'overshadowed by MMR'

http://society.guardian.co.uk/publichealth/story/0,,1160312,00.html

[11 Bravo]

19. And DU's second-favorite whipping boy, Don Imus

was front center in moving this issue forward.

[HuckleB]

20. Forward?

[goclark]

29. Isn't this what RKennedy wanted done?