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Before the FDA recommended that Thimerosal be removed from all vaccines, American children had received 237 micrograms of mercury through vaccines alone by age two. This far exceeds current EPA ‘safe’ levels for mercury which are (one tenth) 0.1 mcg/kg. per day. On the date of birth children received 12 mcg's of mercury from the Thimerosal content in the hepatitis B vaccine which is over 30 times the safe level. The DTaP and HiB vaccines contained over 50 mcg of mercury, which is 60 times greater than the safe level. At six months the second Hep B and Polio vaccines are given, containing 62.5 mcg of mercury which is 78 times greater than safe level.

These "safe" levels are decided in such a way that one can go considerably past them into the "non-safe" side without ill-effects. They are also designed to describe average intake over time, not acute doses. The problem with the above paragraph is the math. A two-year-old at the 50% percentile weighs a little less than 15 kilograms. If a child is 3 kg at birth, his average weight over two years is about 5kg. The "safe" dose is 0.1 ug/day/kg body weight. So, for two years the "safe" maximum dose is 0.1 ug X 365 days X 2 years X 5kg = 365 ug. 237 ug is WAY less than 365 ug, the "safe" cumulative dose. Given that it is more than 33% less than the "safe" dose by two years of age and that the "safe" dose is calculated with extra margins of safety, the dose received by an average 2-year-old is nothing to be worried about.

The brou-ha-ha is similar to that of acrylamide in French fries. The amount is said to be far in excess of the "safe" allowable amount for drinking water. The problem is that a. acrylamide has never been shown to cause cancer in humans and b. "safe" has been set so low that in order to consume in French fries the amount of acrylamide/unit of body weight needed to cause cancer in lab animals a person would have to eat 182 pounds of French fries every day for life.

The reason for the recommendation for eliminating the mercury from the vaccines is not a demonstrated safety issue but the perception of a safety issue. Those who foment the agitation over the "safety" issue in their attempt to dissuade people from vaccine use then seize upon this and say, "They're recommending that all the mercury be removed. See, we TOLD you it was dangerous. Now, if they'd just be honest with you about the vaccinations themselves, we'd all be all right. Don't get your kids vaccinated."

The lack of thought and the amount of shoddy thinking and outright deception among the anti-vaccine crowd is pathetic.

The reason for the recommendation for eliminating the mercury from the vaccines is not a demonstrated safety issue but the perception of a safety issue. Those who foment the agitation over the "safety" issue in their attempt to dissuade people from vaccine use then seize upon this and say, "They're recommending that all the mercury be removed. See, we TOLD you it was dangerous. Now, if they'd just be honest with you about the vaccinations themselves, we'd all be all right. Don't get your kids vaccinated."

The lack of thought and the amount of shoddy thinking and outright deception among the anti-vaccine crowd is pathetic.

Dr. Walter Spitzer on vaccine safety (from the April, 2002 hearings):

I would just like to allude to this, Mr. Chairman. I have been looking for 17 months for studies with scientific admissibility that are adequate pharmacological-epidemiologic evidence of safety, which you would need when a concern has arisen in the community about safety of a particular drug. I have not found any. I have not found it. A proper study of safety under the current conditions, given the frequency of the disorder, would require about 450,000 children. I went through that with statisticians at Cambridge. And that has never been done.

And the ``safety studies'' published are of scores of patients. That is a type of sample size which is simply inappropriate, insufficient, and not a scientific way to look at the safety of a drug. I am astonished that the authorities in the United Kingdom, the United States, and my country of Canada are not requiring it the same way they have required us to do it for all contraceptives, for the right reasons.

[Once again, the emphasis is mine.]

A note on Dr. Spitzer: Walter Spitzer is a well-known epidemiologist, Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology at McGill and Clinical Professor of Medicine at Stanford. He is a late-comer to the debate on MMR and autism. As he has stated in his congressional testimony and in his scholarly work, he has no vested interest in the debate. He has no family members with autism, nor any connection with pharmaceutical companies, nor any body of work in this area to protect.