I got this ‘list of ingredients’ for the Swine Flu Vaccine from a friend today. My gut instinct is that this is a piece of propaganda from the anti-vaccination gang, but I want to prove it.
Is there a verified list of ingredients available, or some information confirming or denying the list in that link? I’m certain that there are medically educated Dopers who can help me out.
Looking at the base website (childhoodshots.com), it appears to be yet another anti-vaccine nutter who just enough braincells to create a crappy website…
Doesn’t look too evil from here.
I suppose some might bitch about thimerosol and squalene suffers from a nasty sounding name.
Still, the listing of ‘aborted baby tissue’ looks like some sort of hyped up nontruth designed to scare off evangelicals and catholics, so as to have more of their kids die.
That being the case, I’d look to a less agenda driven reference for my information.
Interesting - the link works fine for me, but I think there’s some odd FaceBook privacy thing going on.
I haven’t found that specific link on the root website, but the bottom line is that it is a website run by Mary Tocco, manure spreader extraordinaire.
The specifics of the link in question:
All of it looks like a steaming pile of nonsense to me, but rather than just say “No, you’re full of shit.”, I’d rather say “No, you’re full of shit and here’s why.”
Well, not to terrify you, but yes, the swine flu vaccine does contain sodium chloride, a common ingredient in many pesticides, and which has been proven to be toxic to many different species of animals.
As far as some of the rest of it -
[ul][li]Egg protein - True. The CDC recommends that those who are allergic to eggs not receive the standard flu vaccination.[/li][li]Squalene -False. [/li][li]Thimerosol - The single dose version does not contain thimerosol. The multi-dose version does. The amounts are extremely small, and there is no good evidence linking this ingredient to any disorders. [/li][li]Polysorbate 80 - this is the same thing as Tween 80 (cite), so whoever wrote the Facebook thing you cited does not know what he or she is talking about (obviously). The study mentioned was on rats, not mice (a different species), lowered birthweight, not infertility, and the dose was 16 ml/kg bodyweight/day. The equivalent would be for a pregnant woman weighing 132 pounds to be given about a quart of Polysorbate 80 every day for three weeks. Compare that to the amount received in the typical flu vaccine, and judge for yourself if the risk seems excessive (assuming that the risk is the same for humans as for rats).[/li][/ul]
That’s as far as I got before running out of patience. Your gut instinct is, AFAICT, correct - this is vaccine scare propaganda.
egg protein: Well, yes. It’s grown in eggs. You know if you’re allergic to eggs, and they ask you about that before you take it.
Formaldehyde: only in the injectable version, and at doses indescribably tiny compared to what you could get from just taking a biology dissection class.
Polysorbate 80: not present.
Sodium Chloride and Calcium Chloride: omg, salts used in food!
Monosodium Glutamate (MSG): only in the inhaled version. Present at doses far less than you would get from eating anything with malted barley, malt extracts, caramel coloring, etc. (contains naturally occurring glutamates). Seriously, 0.188 mg is incredibly small.
Potassium phosphate- present in the inhaled version. Also present in coffee creamer and generally recognized as safe for food usage.
Thimerosal- only in multi-dose vials; you don’t want vaccine going bad after it’s been opened. Plus this doesn’t cross the blood-brain barrier but people who believe the anti-vax propaganda don’t believe that.
Many thanks, that is indeed the document that got forwarded to me.
At present, I’m going through the Steven Novella ‘Science-Based Medicine’ blog, and though this particular nutter isn’t mentioned, there are lots of articles there refuting the anti-vacciners’ main tenets.
I see two votes for Squalene not being present in the vaccine, and I think this is where alot of the problems come from…way too many sources of information. I just happened to be reading this link a few minutes ago:
Good point, but the problem becomes an issue of cross boarder information exchange. Mine has it yours does not, mine does this, yours does that. Allow people to put all this info into the blender of their mind and then you have a huge issue.
Hey, the government gave billions to companies for the vaccination development! I don’t’ know what that is supposed to mean…
… but if it means to stay away from anything the government subsidized, I think we’d all have a hard time getting to work, using many utilities and eating fruits, veggies and grains!
Stay away from grains! The government gave billions to farmers! Stay off the rail system, the government subsidized it! And the roads? Don’t even get me started on the roads!