Hello Mercury
I'd been scoffing at the anti-vaccination zealots in the '90s, but the Deadly Immunity article in Salon indicates that they actually had a valid concern. I figured their "vaccines cause autism" mantra was just another cry of wolf, since it seemed that everything caused autism from all the claims that were being made.
Maybe I hadn't been reading those vaccinations-are-bad stories carefully, but I though the claim was that the vaccines themselves were harmful. It turns out that it's the preservative thimerosal (which contains the neuro-toxin ethylmercury) used in the vaccines that is supposed to be the culprit.
I sure am glad that thimerosal is no longer being used in single-dose vaccines here in the US -- as a "precaution" since it presents "no danger" according to all those pharmaca-funded studies. I assume that the vaccines my generation got also contained thimerosal, but we didn't get as many shots as kids do these days.
Now the scary part of the Salon article is not necessarily that vaccines and other medicines have been using ethylmercury as a preservative since the '30s (sure it's bad, especially during early childhood development, but not using a preservative in multi-use vaccines has other problems).
The scary part is how that information was being handled once studies showed a strong correlation between increased vaccination (i.e. higher levels of thimerosal being inject in infants) and the increased incidence of autism. The approach was not a general heads up to pediatricians but a concerted and effective campaign to suppress and confuse the data.
Now thimerosal is no longer used in vaccines here (with a few exceptions) but it's happily being exported by the same drug companies -- and incidents of autism are rising in Latin America, China, Africa, and other countries.
Reminds me a bit of how tobacco is being shifted abroad.
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My Grandfather was anti-medicine. I don't believe any of my aunts and uncles on mom's side are vaccinated.
Also, mom has a friend who's child has autism. She believed it was caused by the immunizations. I do remember that the issue was in taking multiple immunizations at the same time. (Measles, Mumps, Rubella together instead of individually).
I had to be vaccinated in order to go to Midwestern University in 1963. I went to Mother's obstetrician, Dr. McFatridge. He knew how Daddy felt about "drugs", said that he had to stick me at least once, and he stuck me once. It took. I'm glad he stuck me only once. In the Navy, sugar cubes, impregnated with the polio vaccine, were passed around. I spat mine out at the first opportunity - I was very much my Daddy's daughter.
I don't really have problems with vaccines per se and I think their benefits outweigh the potential problems. Over all, they have done way more good than harm, despite the anecdotal stories you hear. And one could argue that one autistic child is better than twenty with polio.
I think the problem with multiple vaccines wasn't necessarily the interaction between them (in an MMR shot, for example), but rather the relatively large amount of mercury that the infant was exposed to when receiving several shots.