Note: Vaccinations are fine with me; this is not a political debate.
I was reading about the Kennedy testimony in Vermont since a friend was one of the “silent majority” moms there.
“Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, claims that thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative in some vaccinations, is linked with brain disorders, including autism.”
What are the alternatives to this preservative?
It’s a preservative. As the name implies, it’s for preserving vaccines - that is, increasing their useful shelf life by inhibiting microbial growth. The alternatives are other preservatives. Benzethonium chloride, phenol and 2-phenoxyethanol are apparently the most common substitutes, but there are questions about whether they are as effective as thimerosal in inhibiting microbial growth.
Paging Jackmanni.
It’s used as an antiseptic and anti-fungal.
For what it’s worth, thiomersal hasn’t been used on the normal vaccination schedule for kids for over a decade.
Also, scientifically, the evidence is overwhelming that there is no link between thiomersal use and autism (or any other neurological disorder). It was pulled from current vaccinations due to parental fear rather than any actual scientific evidence of harm (and was subsequently shown not to have a negative impact, anyway).
Rather than thinking of it as “mercury”, it’s better to think of it as a compound containing mercury. Regular table salt contains chlorine. Chlorine gas isn’t anything you want to breathe but it’s perfectly safe in the form of salt. Likewise, you don’t want to be injecting pure mercury into your body, but compounds containing mercury can be perfectly safe to use.
So Kennedy is working with outdated information about what is in the vaccines being given now??
Yes. Well, falsified information, in fact. Kennedy is a crank. There is no evidence that thimerosal causes cognitive dysfunction and it is present only in trace quantities in current child-scheduled vaccines anyway.
Note that the MMR never included thimerosal (see here: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Concerns/thimerosal/thimerosal_faqs.html)
That particular phrase you quote is technically correct but irrelevant to the topic of child vaccinations. Thimerosal is still present in ‘some vaccinations’ given in the US, if you count a few low-volume ones that are given only to adults. No one has put in the money to research alternatives for a few tetanus and snake anti-venom treatments that still use it.
If you’re going to inject something, you obviously don’t want random bacteria or fungi growing in it. Thiomersal is intended to prevent that.
There is absolutely no evidence that thiomersal in vaccines causes autism or any other brain disorder. If it were thiomersal in vaccines causing autism, you’d have expected to see the rate of autism in the US go down in recent years, after it was removed from vaccines. It hasn’t. The typical symptoms of mercury poisoning aren’t the same as symptoms of autism.
The MMR vaccine not only doesn’t cause autism, it actually prevents autism. Congenital rubella is a cause of autism (obviously it’s not the only one) and the MMR vaccine prevents congenital rubella.
That’s probably about the most charitable interpretation one can have for it.
Multi-dose vials of flu vaccine still contain thimerosal.
OMG! No more flu shots for me, then!!! Catching the flu and dropping dead from that is much preferred!
:dubious:
Yes, but those aren’t on the “normal vaccination schedule for kids”, which is what I specified and what appears to be the specific vaccinations that Kennedy, among others, object to specifically with regard to autism/brain disorders.
Pedantry is well and good, but it doesn’t serve much of a purpose in this case.
ETA: Besides which, as has been pointed out repeatedly now, we can very safely say thiomersal isn’t linked to brain disorders anyway and that that the mercury in thiomersal doesn’t behave like elemental mercury in any case.
Now I will veer a little off-course and if it becomes IMHO that’s fine.
I understand there is a bigger picture view of the philosophical exception to be addressed, because after all, if it’s not this specific objection, supporters could always say they want to be protected from whatever harm Big Pharma could cause ever.
But why wouldn’t the protestors take a moment to say, and “BTW, this hasn’t been in vaccinations for ten years”? At least deflate that argument and then move on to the bigger picture?
/IMHO
You seem to be suffering under the impression that the anti-vaccination crowd is interested in facts.
It’s worth noting that Thiomersal is metabolized in the human body as ethylmercury, which is not known to be toxic in humans. Methylmercury, which is present in several types of seafood (i.e. Albacore tuna), is something that needs to be watched out for.
The problem isn’t any one additive in vaccines, or whether vaccines overload the immune system. I think the problem is that parents don’t like getting shots for their kids, they don’t see the downside of not getting shots very often, and autism is a scary problem that they would very much like to have a simple solution for.
Getting your kids vaccinated is inconvenient for the parents and unpleasant for the kids. In a lot of families, it requires a parent to take time off work to take the kid to the doctor, when the kid is feeling fine and isn’t going to enjoy the experience.
A lot of parents have not seen the effects that childhood diseases can have. These diseases are not common (because of vaccination). Most parents today don’t know anyone who has lost a child to whooping cough or measles or polio. It’s easy to think that something isn’t a big deal if you don’t see a lot of it around.
Autism is (or can be, at least) a scary thing. It would be nice if there were something parents could do to keep their kids from getting it, or to cure it if they do. As far as we know now, there isn’t. Thinking that something bad could happen to your kid and there’s nothing you could do about it is scary. The antivax movement is offering parents some illusion of control over whether their kid gets autism. It’s kind of like how a lot of people are more scared of flying than they are of driving, even though we know that driving is objectively more dangerous- they feel like they have more control when they are driving. People like to feel like they have some control over whether they crash or not, and they would like to feel like they have some control over whether their kid gets autism or not.
Well, they argued from emotion too – the spokesperson’s daughter with leukemia can’t risk going to a school without hive immunity. But she’s a doc – at least throw in a fact for the record.
Seriously? This has been in every single rational argument about vaccinations for, oh, I don’t know, say ten years.
Over and over and over again.
I can’t understand how you could not know this unless this is the very first article you’ve ever read on the subject. And if it is, you have no case for accusing others.
The fact that I asked a basic question about it might make you think I didn’t know much and was trying to learn more.
I also wasn’t a medical doctor who went to a hearing about the philosophical exception and fail to mention a basic fact that rebuts the opposition. I’m just surprised she didn’t, that’s all.
It’s probably because the anti-vaccine people would seize on that as proof that it must be dangerous. I’ve seen it happen numerous times on the Internet.
Just to few things to add to what Anne Neville and others have said.
Thimerosal (mercury-based) preservative was removed from vaccines in 2001; some vaccines like MMR never contained it in the first place, and the only vaccine on the childhood schedule that still contains it is the multidose vial version of flu vaccine (even then there are thimerosal-free alternatives available).
It is ludicrous to keep blaming thimerosal for autism and neurodevelopmental disorders in general. As noted, if it caused them, its removal fourteen years ago should have caused the incidence of these disorders to plummet. That hasn’t happened.
The mercury-autism hypothesis was so appealing to RFK Jr. and other antivaxers that they haven’t been able to let it go. Either the CDC and the medical/science/pharmaceutical-industrial complex have covered up the Truth (Kennedy calls the science a “massive fraud” and a “holocaust”), or the problem isn’t just caused by the tiny amounts of mercury in thimerosal, but the incredibly tiny trace amounts of mercury that might still be in a vaccine via the manufacturing process. Scaremongering about “toxins” in vaccines is a staple of antivaxers, many of whom have moved on from mercury to aluminum or other allegedly horrific ingredients (I ran across a self-proclaimed pediatric nurse online who included among these dastardly toxins dextrose and amino acids. I am not kidding).
RFK Jr. is still whooping it up about mercury, in part to promote a recent book of his on the subject, plus his “documentary” called “Trace Amounts”. He’s running around the country making appearances to counter bills in state legislatures to eliminate “philosophical” exemptions to vaccination. RJK Jr. should have learned something from his embarrassment years ago, when his 2005 “Deadly Immunity” piece in Salon and Rolling Stone (about an alleged government coverup of thimerosal dangers) was shown to be a palpitating pile of garbage, later retracted by Salon.
But he’s still flogging the same garbage. He has entered nutbag territory along with chemtrail enthusiasts and 9/11 Truthers.