Family Forum / Parenting / Children's Health / March 2006

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-2006020
9-18230800-bc-ageofautism.xml

The Age of Autism: Doctors for mercury
By DAN OLMSTED

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 (UPI) -- As doctors and health authorities fight state
bans on mercury in vaccines and keep giving it to kids and pregnant women,
one fact stands out: their certainty.

The image of pediatricians and public officials as valiant defenders of
mercury takes a bit of getting used to, given their longstanding efforts to
keep the toxic element out of our food, our bodies and the environment.

No reasonable person -- let alone health professional -- would advocate
keeping mercury in childhood vaccines unless they were absolutely certain
it was an exception to this lethal legacy.

That's especially so because vaccines can be made without the mercury
preservative, called thimerosal. You can take it out and still protect the
health of American children through vaccination, and if you had a shred of
doubt about its safety, surely you would.

If you keep it in, you had better be right.

But what is the real degree of certainty that thimerosal is safe? Is it
absolute? Beyond a reasonable doubt? A preponderance of the evidence -- the
lesser standard that applies in civil cases but not when someone's freedom
(or life) is at stake?

Here's the kind of thing that makes doctors -- most of whom have no more
ability than you or I to investigate the safety of vaccines for themselves
-- feel so certain. It's a paper titled "Vaccine Safety Controversies and
the Future of Vaccination Programs," and it appears in the November 2005
issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.

The authors are from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
which recommends the childhood immunization schedule; the United Nations
World Health Organization, which oversees the vaccination of tens of
millions of people worldwide every year, and several big universities. The
report was supported by "unrestricted grants from GlaxoSmithKline
Biologicals, Sanofi Pasteur MSD, several universities and other
institutions."

"Thimerosal has been used for (more than) 60 years in infant vaccines and
in other applications and has not been associated with adverse health
effects in the general population, except when persons have been exposed to
amounts many orders of magnitude greater than found in vaccines or
pharmaceuticals," the authors write.

That's a ringing endorsement of safety (whether it's supported by the data
is an issue I'll address in upcoming columns). But keep reading: "It should
also be borne in mind that the risks of thimerosal-containing vaccines to
the fetus, premature infant and low-weight infant have insufficiently been
studied."

Whoa. "Insufficiently studied" -- after more than 60 years of giving
thimerosal to pregnant women and babies of every size and shape?
Nonetheless, the CDC recommends flu shots for pregnant women and
6-to-23-months-olds and won't recommend thimerosal-free versions. As a
result, most flu shots still contain mercury.

Another new study is condescendingly titled, "When science is not enough --
a risk/benefit profile of thimerosal-containing vaccines," by Australians
C. John Clements and Peter B. McIntyre in the journal Expert Opinion on
Drug Safety:

"Thimerosal is safe as a vaccine preservative, and should continue to be
used in settings where accessibility and cost require that multi-dose vials
of vaccine are available."

Clements advises the WHO on vaccine policy; McIntyre is director of
Australia's National Center for Immunization Research and Surveillance of
Vaccine-Preventable Diseases.

"The overwhelming weight of scientific opinion rejects the hypothesis that
neurodevelopmental abnormalities are causally related to the use of
thimerosal in vaccines," they point out.

This is the kind of ammunition public health officials and the American
Academy of Pediatrics are firing back at proponents of mercury bans
--"overwhelming" evidence that thimerosal is safe. In Illinois, the state
AAP vigorously opposed the ban.

"Though well intended, these bills do not advance public health and could
inadvertently diminish our state's efforts at fighting influenza," the AAP
said. "Though it is a mercury-containing compound, thimerosal does not pass
from the bloodstream into the brain to any significant degree."

The state legislators listened politely to that dubious assertion -- and
voted to limit thimerosal in childhood vaccines anyway. But that was not
the last word.

As reported by R. L. Nave in the Illinois Times last month: "Citing cost
concerns and a potential shortfall for the upcoming flu season, the
Illinois Department of Public Health filed for a 12-month exemption to the
Mercury-Free Vaccine Act, passed last summer to limit the use of vaccines
containing mercury. However, child-health-care advocates who lobbied for
the bill's passage are upset by what they believe was a premeditated
attempt by IDPH to circumvent state law."

This is what you call chutzpah -- public health authorities thwarting the
express will of the people, certain that flu shots will save humanity and
mercury never hurt anybody. Does the governor never fire anyone?

Almost lost in this crossfire is the simple fact that in 1999, these
selfsame health authorities -- the CDC, the Public Health Service, the
pediatricians, the family physicians -- urged drug companies to remove
thimerosal from childhood immunizations in the United States as soon as
possible.

Most childhood vaccines -- in the United States, not overseas -- are now
thimerosal-free. But that's hardly a blanket reassurance, because most flu
shots do contain thimerosal.

Yet the CDC is still studying whether thimerosal causes autism.

"We do agree the preponderance of evidence to date suggests there is no
association between thimerosal and autism," CDC spokesman Glen Nowak told
us last month. But he said CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding is committed
to exploring all possibilities until the cause or causes of the disorder
are identified.

"Dr. Gerberding has made it clear the CDC has not ruled out anything as
possible causes of autism, including thimerosal," Nowak said. "Science is a
dynamic process. We have continued to fund studies to look at the role, if
any, of thimerosal."

Given these caveats, what would you do? Well, there are two maxims of
medicine that might apply. "First, do no harm," is the obvious one.

The second, related concept is the precautionary principle which, according
to wikipedia.org, "is the idea that if the consequences of an action are
unknown, but are judged to have some potential for major or irreversible
negative consequences, then it is better to avoid that action."

So: Vaccines don't need mercury. Even government experts acknowledge some
possible risks -- to the fetus, for example -- are insufficiently studied
60 years on. A link to autism has not been ruled out. They're continuing to
investigate, as they should.

But the doctors and their public and private allies are battling state by
state to stop mercury bans, and the CDC won't recommend a thimerosal-free
flu shot for kids and pregnant woman. There's a phrase for this approach:

Bombs away.