The mercury in vaccines

A recent article in Salon magazine, written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., suggests that there is abundant evidence of neurological harm done by thimerosal (a preservative which is about half mercury by weight) in vaccines. This tangentially relates to schooling, since thimerosal may be responsible for many autistic spectrum diagnoses as well as language delays and other impairments. Mostly, though, it was just too important for me not to post on it, even if it's slightly off topic. From the article (you can view it without subscribing by simply watching an ad):

Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.

More from the article:

Even many conservatives are shocked by the government's effort to cover up the dangers of thimerosal. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, oversaw a three-year investigation of thimerosal after his grandson was diagnosed with autism. "Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is directly related to the autism epidemic," his House Government Reform Committee concluded in its final report. "This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal, a known neurotoxin."

. . .

"The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have symptoms of neurological or immune-system damage," Patti White, a school nurse, told the House Government Reform Committee in 1999. "Vaccines are supposed to be making us healthier; however, in 25 years of nursing I have never seen so many damaged, sick kids. Something very, very wrong is happening to our children."

Thimerosal has long been banned in most other industrialized nations. The US government considered banning it from vaccines used on animals way back in 1991, the same year they recommended a new vaccine schedule that caused infants to be injected with thimerosal (and thus ethyl mercury) hours after birth.

Most vaccines are now available in thimerosal-free versions. If you have young kids, you can request that they receive only vaccine which does not include this preservative. I have friends who have done this and I don't think they ran into any difficulties (my own children have never been vaccinated).

If your children have already received thimerosal-containing vaccines, you could consider giving them probiotics for a while. Probiotics are the healthy bacteria which live in the intestine (lacto acidophilus, for instance), and you can buy them in capsule form. Probiotic bacteria can convert mercury from organic forms into inorganic forms inside the intestine. As I understand it, mercury is excreted into bile, but just winds up getting reabsorbed again in the intestine unless it gets converted to inorganic form. These healthy bacteria can do that, and then the body can rid itself of the mercury. My whole family takes probiotics for other reasons (better calcium absorption, fewer cavities, lower cholesterol, decreased chance of ear infections or asthma, etc-- it's great stuff).

My next post should be back to our regularly scheduled programming....