Posted on 04/29/2005 12:20:07 PM PDT by CraigG
FDA should take closer look at Thimerosal When you think of the Food and Drug Administration, what image comes to mind?
For some, it is a bloated bureaucracy that tries to regulate every substance entering our bodies.
For others, it is a necessary administration that keeps us safe and healthy.
Taking the latter into consideration, did you know that the FDA has issued 87 product recalls, market withdrawals and safety alerts since January? Almost daily, some food or drug is either mandated or voluntarily recalled by the FDA, often without a single case of a health problem. The FDA just wants to be safe.
Sometimes, it is nothing more serious than undeclared pistachios in a box of Jell-O. Other times, it is as serious as unsterile magnesium sulfate in 5 percent dextrose solutions distributed to hospitals. In this case, five people became ill in a New Jersey hospital, prompting the recall. Either way, they are quick to act. As I say, just looking out for our health and best interests.
So what's their problem with Thimerosal?
Thimerosal has been used since the 1930s as a preservative in many biological and drug products, including many vaccinations. It was deemed safe after being tested on a grand total of 22 adults, who displayed no adverse effects.
However, there is one tiny little problem: Thimerosal is 50 percent mercury by weight.
Mercury? You mean the same stuff that caused widespread poisoning in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s when factories dumped it into the local fishing bays? You mean the same stuff that was accidentally sprayed on seed grain used to make bread in Iraq in the 1970s, causing hundreds of cases of poisoning of children (yet no cases of adult poisoning)? Well, sort of. Thimerosal contains ethyl mercury, as opposed to the natural methyl mercury found in nature — you know, the stuff in fish that the FDA is always warning you about.
However, the FDA has never really studied toxic levels of ethyl mercury, because basically no one has ever really challenged them to do it. Or so they say. They have studied the toxic levels of methyl mercury and continue to reduce the acceptable amount every time a new study is listed. Several years ago, concerned parents, physicians and politicians began questioning the use of Thimerosal in children's vaccines. Based on studies done on mercury poisoning, they were pointing out that certain unexplainable things were happening with children at an alarming rate. Children were increasingly being diagnosed with things like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Asperger's syndrome, pervasive developmental disorders (a blanket term when neurological disorders cannot be easily defined) and, most frighteningly, autism.
As my friend Rose has educated me about autism over the years, an exact cause has never been definitively explained, but they do know that there are many factors that apparently line up just so at some point in a child's early life, and it occurs.
But now, increasing research has begun to show just how much the FDA doesn't know about the dangers of Thimerosal and the pervasive toxins of ethyl mercury.
Oh, sure, the FDA stands behind its statements that no real causal effects have ever shown any link between Thimerosal and occurrences of autism (now 1 in every 166 births). Just the same, the FDA "recommended" to vaccine producers to phase out or discontinue its use — just to be safe, I'm sure.
Yet it continues to be used with some pediatric vaccines. The thinking here, it seems, is that if no one does a study, the FDA can't very well mandate its complete ban.
Well, someone has done a study.
Just released last week, in a publication of the National Institute of Health, it was found that chimpanzee babies exposed to Thimerosal retained twice the amount of mercury toxins in their brains as compared to exposure to similar amounts of methyl mercury.
We've been poisoning our children. There is no other way to read this. Parents do not want to hear terms like "acceptable levels" and "causal effects" and lack of pertinent data from faceless bureaucracies like the FDA.
Parents like Julie Obradovic.
Julie's daughter Eve just celebrated her fourth birthday on Easter. But beginning when Eve was seven months old, she experienced repeated ear infections; later, Julie's motherly instincts told her that something wasn't right. Eve wasn't developing as quickly as her older brother. She wasn't crawling, and her speech was delayed. By the age of 3, no amount of testing could diagnose the cause of staring spells or other developmental problems. Eve is the reason the medical community came up with the term pervasive developmental disorder.
The amount of research data that Julie Obradovic has gathered from around the world would almost be overwhelming if it were not so infuriating. The FDA itself has a page devoted entirely to Thimerosal, in which it states that an internal study done in 2001 cannot prove nor disprove an association between Thimerosal and autism. But the FDA does go to great lengths to assure the reader they are actively studying it and will have more data for us very soon.
For Eve and for Julie, it's too little, too late. But Julie wants to help educate others in this area who feel their children may have been victims of mercury poisoning through vaccines containing Thimerosal. She has formed the Greater Orland Park Area Autism Spectrum Association and will be having her first informational meeting on Monday. Julie tells me that several local parents have already indicated they will be attending. Julie Obradovic can be reached at (708) 301-5466 for the meeting's location. I highly encourage you to give her a call or pass this information on to a friend or relative you think might benefit from it.
Questions or comments? Please contact Dave via davedrown@comcast.net.
4/27/05
They should but they won't. Remember these are the same geniuses who claim mercury is terrible but it's okay to put in our mouths!
Well, this is certainly an egregiously bad article. Breathless innuendo and the obligatory sob story -- which somehow fails to make any connection between "Julie's daughter Eve" and thimerisol.
Hm. Maybe so, or maybe not -- one thing that is clear is that some folks are making a hell of a lot of money by spreading fear of the "maybe so". Be that as it may, I stand by my previous: this is an egregiously bad article.
How much thimerosal is used in a typical application? A 500milihtsm dose of a drug that was 50% mercury by weight would be pretty horrid; a 1 picogram does of a drug that was 90% mercury by weight would be pretty harmless. So where does thimerosal fit in?
some folks are making a hell of a lot of money by spreading fear of the "maybe so".
Another way to look at this is that the drug companies are saving money by not being forced to find alternative preservatives. We're one of the last countries to still be using mercury in vaccines.
"How much thimerosal is used in a typical application? A 500milihtsm dose of a drug that was 50% mercury by weight would be pretty horrid; a 1 picogram does of a drug that was 90% mercury by weight would be pretty harmless. So where does thimerosal fit in?"
There are 25 mcg of mercury in the flu vaccines which are recommended for 6 month old babies and for adults, including pregnant women. The EPA "safe" limit for mercury is .1 mcg per kg of body weight. The average 6 month old baby weighs 16 lbs or 7.3 kg which would put that baby 34 times over the EPA safety limit for mercury.
But the exposure doesn't end there. Many of the vaccines given to babies contains "trace" amounts of thimerosal. This is because thimerosal is used in the manufacturing process. They attempt to remove the mercury after the process but they are not able to remove all of it. I've never seen any literature describing how much "trace" really is.
The amount of mercury our children were subjected to in 1999 and earlier via vaccines was 212.5 mcg in their first year of life. To put this in perspective they were about 50 times over the safety limit at birth, 138 times over at 2 months, 72 times over at 4 months, 68 times over at 6 months & 55 times over at 12 months. Receiving bulk doses like they did is much more dangerous than receiving it spread out evenly over the year.
In 1999 drug companies were advised, not mandated, to remove thimerosal from vaccines. Existing lots were not recalled. We know that thimerosal was in these vaccines as late as 2003 and still have no guarantee today since there is no mandate against it.
thanks for the ping.
Really? Who are all these people, and how can I get in on that money? To date, no US drug manufacturer has been forced to pay out a class-action settlement in a mercury-based lawsuit. So where is this money being made?
I thought the article was excellent- it asked a lot of hard-hitting questions and gave a real-world example of the damage this stuff is causing.
One thing I have to wonder, though, is why so many people are so hot to defend thimerosal. I won't stoop so low as to imply that there's money involved here, but it is a bit odd to me. It's a bit like defending lead paint when there's mounting evidence against it.
What if, just hypothetically, a terrorist organization had infiltrated our water supply and poisoned it with a substance containing 50% mercury by weight, say, if they dumped a ton of thimerosal in a reservoir? What would happen then? Woud the government test the water and decide that since it's a FDA-approved preservative that there's no danger? I seriously doubt it. But that's exactly what we're being asked to believe in the case of thimerosal and vaccines. Cases of autism have risen from 1 in 100,000 in the 1950's to 1 in 166 today. The only real correlation is the increasing incidence of environmental, industrial, and medical mercury.
The only thing 'egregiously bad' in this case is the government's handling of the problem. Instead of honest research we get coverups and back-door, under-the-table deals with drug companies under the cover of 'national security'.
Al Qaeda couldn't have done more damage to us than Merck, Ely Lilly and every other company manufacturing this garbage have already done.
There's a large "alternative medicine" industry built around mercury. For example, see a Google of homeopath mercury.
One direct example: there are numerous dentists who've made a lot of money by replacing amalgam (mercury-containing) fillings. (See, e.g., this Quackwatch article -- I can't verify the author's medical claims, but no matter -- the monetary aspects are at issue here.)
Anecdotally, my cousin recently described to me some sort of witch-doctor-sounding "mercury test" administered by her naturopath. It apparently consisted of waving a bottle of mercury in front of her belly and looking for, well, something....
Again, I stand by my initial assessment. The article itself is egregiously bad.
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