AUGUST
04, 2020
Thimerosal, which is 50 percent ethyl mercury by
weight, had been used as a vaccine preservative since the 1930's in the
diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis shot, known as D.T.P., and it was later added to
some vaccines for hepatitis B and haemophilus bacteria, which by the early
1990's had become routine immunizations for infants.
The F.D.A. team's conclusions
were frightening. Vaccines added under Halsey's watch had tripled the dose of
mercury that infants got in their first few months of life. As many as 30
million American children may have been exposed to mercury in excess of
Environmental Protection Agency guidelines -- levels of mercury that, in
theory, could have killed enough brain cells to scramble thinking or hex
behavior.
T he latest science on mercury damage suggested that even small amounts of organic mercury could do harm to the fetal brain. Some of the federal safety guidelines on mercury were relaxed in the 90's, even as the amount of mercury that children received in vaccines increased. American children still receive up to 20 vaccines in the first two years of life. The first symptoms of autism often appear between the ages of 12 and 24 months. A major California study recently confirmed, autism is being diagnosed in numbers far higher than ever before, suggesting that a nongenetic cause may be partly to blame. In some children, the behavioral traits of autism present themselves along with physical problems like sensory dysfunction and motor disorders that have rough correlates in the mercury-poisoning literature. For some parents, thimerosal provides a grand unifying theory that squarely points the finger at the government and vaccine makers.
(1)
As thimerosal was removed
from childhood vaccines, the number of neurodevelopmental disorders decreased
in the US
. June 2006,
& (b
Exposure
to mercury from thimerosal-containing vaccines was associated with an increased
risk of neurodevelopmental problems in infants from 1992-199
)
7.
Apr
2005; &(c)
Rates of autism, speech disorders, mental retardation,
infantile spasms, and thinking abnormalities were higher in children exposed to
higher thimerosal levels
